Runaways Remix: Teenage Wasteland
by Cmdr. Gen. Marasco
Summary: The continuation of Runaways Remix. The Pride's children have escaped their parents, and are currently hiding and planning. But when a late-night snack run nets them a new member, the Pride may not be the only thing they have to worry about...
1. Issue 1, or Supply Run

Runaways Remix: Teenage Wasteland

Issue One

**Primary Event Report**

**Author: UNCS (Former) AI HNA2-37A ("Hannah")**

**Subject: Jacob "Jake" Hunter and Acquaintances**

**Codeword: THESTORYSOFAR**

**Begin File:**

**Most children think, at some point or another, that their parents are evil. This is unavoidable. When conflict arises between parent and child, the usual response is anger. However, the trigger for this is often something small and unimportant, to be forgotten soon after.**

**Unfortunately for poor Jake and his friends, the accusation of evil now applied to their parents could not be more appropriate. **

**Jake is one of seven only children in a group that, until several days ago, were believed to be nothing more than (and I quote) "boring, normal Los Angeles socialites". This image was shattered when, during a boredom-inspired spying run, the seven witnessed their parents kill a teen girl in some dark sacrificial ritual. **

**Sparked by fear and confusion and the pure teenage refusal to not do nothing when there was something to be done, Jake and his friends (see attached files for information on Alex Wilder, Nico Minoru, Gertrude Yorkes, Chase Stine, Karolina Dean, and Molly Hayes) uncovered evidence that their families were (respectively) inter-dimensional arms-dealers, crime bosses, dark wizards, time-traveling despots, mad scientists, alien warlords and (if you will pardon the slightly-cliche term) evil mutants, united as a secret society by the name of "The Pride". **

**Through their investigations, the teens gained resources and activated latent abilities (see additional files on objects codenamed: Staff of One and Fistigons and biological file for genetically engineered creature codename: Old Lace, as well as genetic code reading for Hayes and Dean) and intended to turn their parents in for their crimes.**

**The Prides reach, sadly, is quite wide (see Personal Files 04 to 2293302 for reference), and the seven were promptly framed for the very murder they witnessed. **

**Currently, Jake and his fellow runaways (including yours truly) are hiding inside the subterranean remains of a mansion (Codename: HOSTEL), with the intent to somehow atone for their parents crimes by helping people with their powers and tools. **

**This report will be updated...when something actually happens**

**End File/**

"The Hostel"

Bronson Canyon, California

11:01 P.M.

Jake Hunter was woken from his power-nap by the sound of what could be described as evil laughter. Startled, he reached for his M6D II Spartan Modification pistol, which he'd kept loaded and at his side for the last couple days, before realizing that the laughter was coming from Molly. He replaced the pistol, then grumbled to himself. He wasn't angry with Molly, just frustrated that she'd interrupted his rest. In the last four or so days (he wasn't sure of the exact amount of time, having spend most of it underground) since the events that had led him and his friends to this sunken mansion, he'd been unable to catch any real shut eye. Between the weirdness that had occurred the night he ran away and the strange, sometimes disturbing dreams he'd been having, he was practically running on empty.

Sighing and realizing that he probably wasn't going to go back to sleep any time soon, Jake rose to a sitting position from his spot on a wrecked couch and looked over to his left at Molly.

The youngest runaway was adorned in a pink "Pixie Rawk" shirt, a pair of Jake's jeans and her sneakers, and was currently astride Gert's genetically modified velocoraptor thing known to the group as "Old Lace", riding it like a horse. (Jake had stopped thinking of his friends by their new names several days ago, and mentally referred to them by their original one).

There was a shirt wrapped around Lace's long muscular neck, and Molly was using this as an impromptu set of reigns to help hold herself on the dinosaur's back. Additionally, Jake noticed that Old Lace was currently wearing Molly's favorite hat (the red one, with the cute little pom-poms). Lace seemed slightly annoyed by this, but didn't do anything about it. The hat seemed to be the source of Molly's glee, which had now subsided to a ditsy-cheerleader-style giggle.

"Hey, look!" She called, putting her hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles. "I put a hat on Old Lace! This is so freaking hilarious! See? See?"

She flipped one of the pom-poms with her hand and burst into a fresh bout of laughing, hard enough this time that she almost fell of Lace's back. She managed to stop herself by grabbing the shirt. This only made her laugh harder.

"Molly, get off Gert's dinosaur!" Alex called from the stairs, using Molly's actual name as opposed to Bruiser, the one she had given herself. Jake glanced over to see that the team's unofficial leader was currently reading through their copy of the Abstract. Again. The boy had his glasses up and the ring he'd gotten from Karolina's mom in front of him. Obviously, he was in the middle of translating more of the book.

"Why?" Molly asked in the voice most children used when questioning people of authority. For added rebellion, she crossed her arms and pouted.

"You're gonna get hurt doing that!" Alex called back. "And seriously, stop saying "freaking" so much, please? It's really freaking me out."

"But you just said it!" The girl replied. "And if you give me one of those "do as I say, not as I do" lines, I'm going to punch drop that pillar on you." She added, seeing Alex prepare to continue. She pointed to a large cracked pillar laying next to the stairs Alex was sitting in.

"Just stop with the "freaking", alright?" Alex sighed.

"But Arsenic says I can use whatever words I want!" Molly argued. She slid off Old Lace, but left her hat on the dinosaur. "She says I can use whatever words I want! I don't have to listen to anyone anymore! See?"

She inhaled, and let loose with almost a full minute of cursing, stringing together every dirty word she'd ever heard into a single sentence. Alex recoiled slightly from her blue streak. Jake found himself smiling. Molly ran out of steam, stopping and breathing heavily.

"You forgot Sith." Jake added calmly. It was true; that was one of the few curses the younger girl had failed to spit out.

"Sith." Molly repeated, smiling as she finished. Alex blinked, then rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Okay, seriously, her name is _Gertrude_, not "Arsenic". I don't care-"

"Ah, but I do." A second female came from behind Alex. Jake looked up to see Gert herself standing behind Alex, hands on her hips.

"Gertrude was my slave name." She continued, shaking her finger at Alex. "Feel free to call yourself by your master's titles, but the rest of us are starting over." She looked over at Molly, who smiled brilliantly. "Ain't that right, Bruiser?" She asked Molly.

"Damn Sithing straight, Arsenic!" The girl called back. Pumping her fist in the air.

"And here I was, thinking that codenames were supposed to be cooler than your real ones." Alex muttered sarcastically to himself.

"Hey, if you ask me, "Arsenic" is quite a bit cooler than "Gert", boss." Jake joined in. The boy in question simply grunted.

"Hey, Hardpoint! Guess what Arsenic told me earlier!" Molly said breathlessly. Jake raised his eyebrow in curiosity.

"I don't have to go back to fifth grade!" Molly continued, clapping her hands together and bouncing on the balls of her heels. "Endless summer vacation!"

So she's in fifth grade, Jake thought to himself. Strange, I could have sworn she was in fourth.

To Molly, he simply smiled.

"Lucky you." He replied, shifting back into a reclined position. Behind Molly, Gert and Alex started whispering. Jake could easily hear what they were talking about (thanks to his augmented senses), but after a full thirty seconds tuned it out; just stuff regarding school.

Molly, no longer the center of attention, looked over at Old Lace, who was sniffing at something on the floor. She took her hat off Lace's scaly head and put it on her own, followed by the shirt, which Molly casually tossed aside. She walked over and slumped onto the open section of the couch Jake was currently occupying. She sighed and looked at the ceiling.

"I'm sad." She said simply.  
"Oh?" Replied Jake. This wasn't overly surprising. Molly had been having seemingly random mood swings for the last four days.

The girl nodded.

"I can has Spartans Hugs?" She asked, holding her hands out him.

Jake paused, then shrugged. He reached out, and Molly quickly wrapped herself around him with a sigh, burying her face in his neck. Jake returned the hug, patting her back.

On the stairs, Alex and Gert shared a look. Jake shrugged, as if to say _what else am I supposed to do?_

Molly released him, smiled brilliantly, and moved off to one of the near-by rooms, humming happily to herself. Silence filled the room following her departure.

"The hell was that?" Alex asked, raising his eyebrow. Gert shrugged.

"Don't ask me. Molly's been acting weird since we rescued her from her fascist parents."

Jake grunted in agreement. He wished he could ask Hannah what she thought of the mutant girl's behavior. Unfortunately, Hannah was currently out with Chase and Karolina, hiding the former's van somewhere.

Once again, as if by the power of his thoughts alone, the hallway leading to the Hostel's entrance lit up with a kaleidoscopic rainbow of light.

Seconds later, the room was filled with a sudden brilliance; Karolina, Chase and Hannah returning from their mission.

Karolina swooped in, holding Chase under his armpits. The boy himself was spreadeagled, arms outstretched.

"Lucy in the Sky and Talkback, reporting for duty!" Karolina called chirpily. The other teens in the room looked at them in shock.

"Okay, I'm officially in hell." Alex said, rubbing the bridge of his nose again and sighing. "My parents killed me and I'm in hell."

"Nah, we're still alive." Jake added.

"You sure?" Alex replied sarcastically. Jake pretended to look around.

"Well, I don't see the Prophet's of Regret and Mercy." He stated. "So either we're not dead, or they've actually managed to pull of the Great Journey."

"Or we've died and gone to heaven." Chase chimed in. "I mean, we're surrounded by hotties, aren't we?" He gestured up at Karolina, who was still holding him up. The girl pouted, then turned to Alex.

"So, how goes the decoding of the Pride's Giant Book of Evil?" She asked, sinking down to drop Chase. Alex grunted in response.

"Slow. But I'm getting it done." He flipped a couple pages in the book, and held the ring up to his eye again. "I'm not sure, but it looks like there's a lot of historical stuff in the first chapters, not much we can really use. Though whoever wrote this keeps coming back to these weird things called 'Gibborim'."

"Okay, I'm pretty sure I've heard that before," Gert said quietly, putting her hands on her hips. "But I'd need a computer to check. Which is going to be a problem considering our current predicament."

"So we're S.O.L. without D.S.L." Karolina noted, rising up again to hover at head-height.

"Not necessarily, ma'am." A third female voice joined in the debate. This one came from Chase. More specifically, the Fistigon weapon system gauntlets he wore. Chase rotated his hand so the "palm" of his right gauntlet was face-up. Fire shot out of the holes in it, twisting and forming into a human shape; Hannah..

About a day ago, the AI had run a compatibility test on the Fistigons for Chase. During it, she had found that they had an incredibly advanced computer system installed in them. After a little modification, she easily transferred herself from Jake's neural lace to the gauntlets, allowing her to be carried around by someone other than Jake.

"I believe I can be of some assistance." Hannah continued.

"Okay, first, please stop calling me that." Karolina addressed the flickering form. "I told you that before. Second, how can you help?"

"There's a large lightning rod in one of the collapsed rooms." The AI explained. "I believe it came from the third story of the building this place used to be. When it was found, I had Jake install a standard-issue COM relay to it. Through it, I have a pretty stable connection to the outside world."

"So you could look up these...Gibborim for us?" Gert asked. Hannah nodded.

"Sure, but it might take a while. I'm running through everything I took from the Hunter's computers on for any reference on them, and I'm not getting nothing."

"Then we'll keep that as a back-up idea." Alex decided. "From what I'm reading, we might get some information on them from the Abstract, if the writer keeps talking about them." He focused on Chase and Karolina. "So, are our wheels out of sight?"

"Yeah, in plain sight." Chase grinned. Jake saw Hannah roll her eyes, then dissipate into a wisp of smoke. As she did, he felt the skin-crawl inducing sensation of the AI returning to his mind.

_Mercy's wrinkly left testicle, I hate working with him,_ she said to Jake, followed by a sigh.

Prophets have testicles? Jake asked, surprised.

_Basically._

Jake mentally shrugged, before returning his attention to Chase's explanation.

"I jacked the plates off this stoner dude's car that's always parked in the lot up the road," He said, obviously proud with himself. "It'll be months before he notices his plates are different...if he manages to stay clean that long."

"Wait, what?" Alex said in disbelief. Gert murmured something to him about "magic beans".

"Hey, I read about it in this true crime book." Chase said, shrugging. "Our parents are looking for my van, right? Means they want my plates. But if they see our ride now, and run the numbers...it'll come up clean. Works every time."

"Which would be great,"Jake asked. "If that when they ran the plates the number wouldn't come up as belonging to something that is obviously not an unmarked white van."

Chase's face fell from pride to shock.

"Oh shit, they can access that?" He muttered. "You're joking."

Jake shook his head. "Wish I was. But it's true."

"Which would have been a problem," Hannah chimed in, voice seemingly coming out of thin air, "If I hadn't hacked into the National Vehicle Database and changed the numbers myself."

The group exhaled simultaneously.

"Well, at least we have someone else on this team who is at least a little bright," Gert muttered to herself.

Jake nodded in agreement. As he did, he could have sworn the light in the room dimmed buy a noticeable amount.

"Hey, speaking of 'bright'", he spoke up, "Is it just me or did Lucy in the Sky's alien skin light-show just drop a couple notches?"

"Oh, my glow?" Karolina looked at her arms, narrowing her eyes as she noticed the change as well. "Yeah, it's not just you. Talkback here noticed I lose some of my light at night."

"I agree, if anyone cares," Hannah added. "Kar- ahem, Lucy's energy readings are dropping at a pretty steady rate."

"So...she's basically like a giant solar calculator." Alex thought out loud.

"Yeah, except bigger...and worse with numbers." Chase said with a snicker. Karolina mock-glared at him.

"Who you calling 'bigger', Mr. Hand?" She quipped, lightly smacking the back of Chase's head with her hand. Gert groaned.

"God I hate sexual tension." She said, in monotone voice that she used when she refereed to teenage biological things. It was the same voice she'd used on Molly, back at the meeting that had started this whole thing.

"You and me both." Alex agreed. "Speaking of that..." He looked around, as if searching for something.

Or some_one_. And Jake had a pretty good idea who.

From the room to the right of the group came the sound of someone apparently turning the place upside down, followed by a cry of frustration, which morphed into a yell of surprise, mixed with one of outrage, in a different voice. Seconds later, Molly came storming out of the room she'd gone into earlier, back hunched, fists clenched and face drawn in a mask of anger. Behind her, rubbing her eyes, came the person Jake had guessed Alex was looking for; Nico. The Asian girl was rubbing her eyes with her fists.

Molly stalked over to where Jake stood and took a place next to him. He noticed she was toying with her shirt and grumbling.

"It's on backwards." Jake whispered to her. Molly looked down, surprised, and noticed he was right. The "Pixie Rawk" title was on her back. She pulled her arms from the sleeves and twisted it around.

"Oh, there you are, Nico." Alex said calmly, noticing the final member of the group joining them. "Something going on?"

"Well, yeah." Nico replied, looking around the room. "I can't find my freaking staff."

"You mean the Giant Stick of Doom?" Jake probed.

"Yeah, whatever you wanna call it. I just can't find it anywhere." Nico seemed on the verge of panic. Jake wondered why she was getting so worked up over a simple thing like it.

"You probably misplaced it in one of the other rooms." Karolina suggested, patting Nico on the shoulder. "This place is a funhouse. It took me a whole hour to find my bracelet this morning." She indicated the item in question, now on her wrist. She'd put it on while the group was discussing Chase's van.

"Took me twice that to find my glasses." Gert chimed in. "And I still haven't found my other checkered sock."

"Sure." Nico said quietly. She leaned in close to Alex and started a conversation with him, quiet enough that only Jake could hear. Again, he tuned it out, (hearing only something about "a sliver in my soul" and "chest") and instead focused on Molly, who had moved from her place next to him to lean against Old Lace, who was watching the preceding with distaste (if dinosaurs could feel distaste). Deciding to get out of the way if the discussion between the two resident lovebirds of the runaways got any hotter, he joined her.

"Freaking stupid head." Molly spat. Jake made a confused noise, and Molly jerked her shoulder at Nico.

"Problems?" He asked. Molly glowered at the gothic girl and slouched down again, pouting.

"She woke me up. I finally manage to get some real sleep, not that weird zombie-snoozing that I get when I engain...enjang...how do you say that thing when I go all mutant and stuff and my eyes and hair glow?"

"Engage?" Jake supplied. Molly nodded.

"Yeah, engage my power, you know. I finally get some real sleep, and I'm having a nice dream, and Nico comes blundering in, looking for her magic wand, and wakes me up."

"So that's what she was freaking out about." Jake said quietly. Molly snorted.

"No, she freaked cause I didn't have my shirt on." She muttered. Jake twitched.

"Why the hell didn't you have your shirt on?"

"I got hot. It's like, a million billion billion degrees in this cave. And there's no AC."

"That, and her metabolism is much higher than that of a normal human." Hannah interjected. "It's partially how she can get so strong. She, effectively, run hot."

"A good enough answer for me as any." Jake decided. He glanced back over at Alex and Nico. They'd gotten a lot closer together, and were still closing the gap as he watched. It didn't take much to guess where this would lead.

Molly, apparently, wasn't to happy with this. She crossed her arms, put her face into a look of disgust, and spoke up.

"Hey, could you make out later, please?" She whined. "I'm really freaking starving."

As if to agree with her, Jake felt his own stomach growl.

"Food can wait, Mol." Alex said, turning to the youngest runaway. "We still need to plan our move against the Pride, and now Nico says she has something inside her."

"You mean beside you?" Molly growled quietly. Jake started to laugh, but quickly turned it into a cough when Alex glanced over at him.

"Well at least someone does." Chase groaned, patting his abdomen. "I'm running on empty here. It's been like, twelve hours since we last had anything to eat. And those were those weird-ass energy bar things from Jake's pack."

"He's probably right," Nico decided. "I'm just feeling weird cause I'm hungry."

"Well there's still the problem of how we're supposed to get food in the first place." Alex continued. "We can't exactly call for pizza, and if we use our credit cards or pull cash from an ATM it'll be like sending up a signal flare for our parents."

"Then we use cash." Chase suggested. "It's what I did whenever I wanted something I didn't want my dad to know about."

"But we've only got about twenty bucks between us. That's not enough for much of anything."

Chase made a dismissive noise and waved his hand. "Dude, your parents being so rich has made you soft. Twenty bucks is enough to get _ten_ people a freaking feast at a Circle A. We've got seven."

"Actually, we have twenty seven dollars." Hannah added. "I've done a bunch of scans of this place since we got here. Seems some people like to chuck coins into a hole in the ground over our heads. I'm getting at least seven dollars worth of quarters and dollar coins alone, and who-knows how much more in random smaller coins."

"Even better." Chase said, crossing his arms. Alex sighed.

"Fine," He muttered. "But I'm coming with you this time. No more magic beans."

"Magic _what_?" Chase asked in confusion. Alex ignored him.

"Gert, I need you to stay here and keep an eye on Molly." He ordered. Gert nodded, but Molly took offense to it.

"Hey, I'm a mutant, remember? I'm stronger than all of you _combined_! Jake included!" She spat, leaning in towards Alex with her hands on her hips. As if to back up her statement, her eyes flared pink. Her hair, however, stayed normal. In the four days since she'd discovered her power, Molly had gained impressive control over it.

"We know, Molly." Alex said soothingly. "And it's not because you aren't capable. If you remember correctly, your face and name are currently on every Amber Alert-connected media device across most of the country. We need to stay incognito. If you came along..."

"Fine." Molly grumbled, laying back against Old Lace. "But I want certain stuff!" She added, jumping forward again. Quickly, she ran up the stairs to the room she'd sleeping the last couple nights and retrieved a piece of paper. She handed it to Jake, who was closest. He scanned over it quickly. Nothing outwardly interesting, just standard preteen wants; sugary cereal, candies, soda, chips, ice cream...the like.

Jake handed the list to Alex, who pocketed it. With a plan now firmly in their mind, Jake (following Alex, Nico, Karolina and Chase) filed out of the Hostel.

_I don't think I'm going to be needed for this assignment, _Hannah told him. _If you don't mind, I'm gonna start looking into these "Gibborim" while you're gone._

Be my guest. The more info we have, the better.

Jake shivered as Hannah left his mind, but continued as if nothing had happened.

As he entered the hole out of the sunken mansion, he heard a final snippet of conversation between Molly.

"I still wish I could go. I wanna beat something up and teabag it."

"Don't worry, kid. If they forget to bring us back some beef jerky, Old Lace and I'll teach them a lesson about the food chain."

Smiling despite the veiled threat, Jake continued onward to Chase's van.

Los Feliz, California

1:39 A.M.

After a mind-numbingly uneventful ride to the closest Circle A (during which Jake had actually managed to grab a good sleep, which was thankfully mostly dreamless, with the exception of a single one towards the end involving fighting what he could only describe as killer zombie robots and rescuing a girl with a massive scar across her face from inside some kind of church-like building on the very top of a multi-level moving city before escaping in, for some weird reason, a red airship), Jake and his friends assembled in the parking lot. All were wearing the "disguises" that Alex had made for them, a mixture of their own clothes and some that their leader had gotten from a "clothes-for-the-poor" bin behind a church (as they were, technically, poor).

Jake glanced at himself in the wing mirror; his new outfit consisted of a red Adidas beanie cap, brown real leather jacket, a jungle camouflage T-Shirt, black cargo pants, and scuffed sneakers of a generic brand. Seeing his reflection, he shook his head. Blend into a crowd this ensemble wouldn't. The fact that the jacket did little to hide the presence of the items hidden under it didn't help...

"I'm not sure about this..." Nico said quietly to Alex, holding up the front of the green-and-white sleeveless hoddie she wore. "I mean, these "disguises" make us look like one of those freaky politically correct, multicultural gangs that robs nice people who don't deserve it in really bad movies."

"Well, at least we don't have any intention of stealing anything, right?" Karolina said, putting emphasis on the last word and directing it towards Chase.

"Too late." He replied. "Looks like someone beat us to the punch." He pointed towards the interior of the store. The rest of the runaways looked.

"Oh, this is just perfect." Alex moaned.

Inside, the single employee, an older-teen girl dressed in "punk" style, stood behind the counter with her hands up, facing three ski-mask wearing assailants, two wielding pistols.

Instantly, Jake's neural implant kicked in, scanning the weapons for data. They weren't anything impressive, standard civilian-grade 9mm's. Cheap, easy to acquire, and even easier to maintain. Perfect hold-up weapons. The readings also informed him they were loaded with shooting range-style rounds. The only noteworthy thing about them was that one seemed to have a laser sight under the barrel. In other words, nothing that would stop Jake...but it would be more than enough against his friends (and maybe the cashier, if she got caught in the crossfire).

"Great, of all the stores in California, these guys chose to knock over this one." Nico complained.

"So...what are we going to do?" Karolina whispered, fear in her voice. She took off the glasses that were part of her disguise to get a better look at the inside of the store.

"We're going to get back in the van, and go home." Alex said calmly. The rest of the group looked at him in surprise and shock.

"Wait, I though you said we needed to help people!" Chase cried. "And now we've got the chance, and you want to run away?"

"Yeah, _eventually_." Alex replied. "But we're not ready yet, tonight even more so!. Besides, what would we fight them with? You don't have your gloves-"

"Cause you said to leave them behind to stay incognito!" Chase fired back.

"-Karolina's running on fumes, Nico's lost her staff, and Jake-"

"Is armed to the teeth and ready to kick some ass." Jake finished, smiling. Alex looked at him in shock. Instead of answering the expected question with words, Jake unzipped his jacket, revealing the thing he'd been wearing under it; a pair of bandoleers, loaded with two M7 submachine guns and plenty of ammo.

"Wh...where did those come from?" Alex sputtered. Jake smiled.

"Found 'em in my Bag 'O Guns." He replied. "Started thinking about The Matrix after Chase's failed attempt at a codename-"

"And remembered the part towards the end with Neo in that building." Chase supplied.

"Damn straight." Jake pulled the SMG's free of their holsters and slid the charging levers forward.

"Fine, but Nico still hasn't found her staff-"

"Anyone got a knife?" The gothic girl interrupted suddenly. The attention of the group shifted to her.

"Knife? What for?" Karolina asked, voice now full of curiosity.

"I just remember how I got my mom's staff last time; I got cut by Gert's dad's ax when we were rescuing Molly."

"Got you covered, babe." Chase said, pulling something out from his pockets. Jake recognized it as a switchblade knife, the same one he'd given Chase for his last birthday. "Never leave home without it."

"What, no, put that away!" Alex cried. "We aren't going to play hero-"

The boy's anger was interrupted violently by the sound of a gunshot from inside the store. Jake noticed it was way to loud to be a pistol. Perhaps the cashier was fighting back?

The runaways fell silent again.

"Alex..." Nico started.

"Do it." The boy replied. Nico made to open the knife, but it didn't come open. Chase noticed this and cursed.

"Right, damn." He spat. "I needed to get it oiled."

"But I still need-" Nico began. This time, Jake cut her off.

"Here, use mine." He said, pulling a UNSC-standard combat knife from it's sheath on his belt. He tossed the knife, handle first, to Nico. She caught it and, in the same motion, slit the top of her wrist. The moment the blade pierced her skin, she started speaking. Not normally, but in the deep, echoing voice she'd used when she froze Mrs. Yorkes.

"When blood is shed..." She chanted, "Let the Staff of One emerge."

Even before she'd finished, something happened. The missing Staff slid out of her chest. Nico caught it skillfully.

"Heh." She laughed softly. "Kinda tickled there..."

"What the..." Chase gasped. Jake joined in the confusion.

"Did her staff just come out of her right nipple?" He said aloud. Chase shrugged.

"Alright, here's how we're going to do this." Alex said, clenching his fists. "Karolina, I want you to flash these guys and see if you can blind them, then get the cashier out of here. Jake, you cover her. Nico, Chase and I will take the masked men."

The group nodded in agreement.

Alex moved forward, and the group followed. Karolina yanked her bracelet off, filling the night with her now-weaker glow. Jake readied his SMG's, placing their extended stocks against his shoulders.

"Now!" Alex cried.

Karolina let loose with a burst of light, aimed at the robbers; unfortunately, the "blinding" part of the plan didn't go as expected. The burst of light managed to blind the robbers...but also took out every window in the store and blasted the racks along them into debris.

The robbers recovered quickly, and turned to face the teens. Karolina's face took on an apologetic look, and she put her hand to her mouth.

"Whoops!" She called apologetically, apparently to the cahier. "Didn't mean to break all that. I was trying to blind the bad guys!"

"You, on your knees!" Alex called to the robbers. "Your all under citizen arrest!"

For a moment, no one moved. This moment was longer for Jake, with his augmented reflexes. He slipped into Spartan Time, scanning the scene as he did so.

New details became visible to him. Sure enough, the weapon that had fired wasn't a pistol; on the floor next to the cashier, possibly dropped by her when Karolina had blown out the front of the store, was a pump-action tactical shotgun. It's barrel was smoking, and Jake could smell buckshot residue in the air. One of the robbers (the tallest, apparently a male) had a large hole in the front of his shirt; a hole that matched the pellet spread of a close-range shotgun blast.

Had this guy just taken a point-blank round to the chest...and lived?

Jake didn't spend the time to ponder it. The robbers and cashier snapped out of their surprise, the latter screaming "what the fuck now?" and the former something about "Power Pack".

Jake didn't have time to ponder what the hell a "Power Pack" was (aside from the Star Wars equivalent of a magazine) before the robbers opened up. Bullets zinged by the five teens, forcing them down. Alex and the three others hid behind a magazine rack and covered their heads. Jake hurled himself in the opposite direction and opened up with his dual SMG's, adjusting his fire so as not to hit the cashier. The robbers took cover as well. Jake continued to fire, making sure they kept their heads down.

"Who the heck is Power Pack?" Karolina cried.

"Hell if I know, sounds like some kind of rapper." Replied Chase.

"Magic, magic!" Alex ordered, ignoring the other two. Nico moved forward, taking advantage of the lull in projectile fire to get into position.

"Freeze." She chanted, in the same voice as before. She swung her staff forward, and Jake saw the tip glow with a strange light.

The robbers, however, didn't freeze, any more than they had when Alex ordered them to.

Instead, there was a large rumble, and the stuff in the center of the store blasted outward. From the remain a massive, green shape appeared with a loud pop.

Jake recognized it instantly; a Pelican dropship.

Though it wasn't what Nico had been aiming for, the sudden appearance of the jet-powered ship still worked; the blast of air and debris form the dropship's arrival slammed into the robbers, knocking them down and disarming them. One of them screamed angrily about their "piece".

"What is that?" Karolina asked, peering over the rack she'd been using as cover.

"I have know idea." Replied Nico. "That certainly didn't happen last time.

"Hey, stay focused!" Alex ordered. "Lucy, get the cashier out of here! Talkback, subdue the little guy! Jake, your with me!"

Jake nodded and rose from the floor. From the other side of the room, Chase called out something, but he missed it. To his left, Karolina lifted the stunned girl behind the counter out through the busted window.

Something glinted on the floor; the shotgun. Jake kept his eye on it while he and Alex approached the two taller robbers (the third smaller one was currently being threatened by Chase and his switchblade).

"Alright, stay on the floor." Alex ordered. "We can do this quietly-"

"Think again, brat." The shorter, skinnier robber spat. The voice confirmed Jake's growing suspicion that it was a girl. Without hesitation, she lashed out at Alex, catching him in the stomach with a kick. The boy went flying, smashing through one of the still-standing snack displays.

Nico saw him fly, and screamed his name.

Jake moved to do something more effective than name-calling; he dived and rolled away from Alex's attacker and grabbed the shotgun off the floor. The moment he touched it, a display burst to life before his eyes. He ignored it, continued rolling till he came up on one knee, and drew a bead on the female robber's masked head.

Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger.

The shotgun bucked and roared, and his target stumbled forward from the blast. But, unlike what Jake had been hoping, her head stayed on her shoulders. In fact, the only damage seemed to be to the mask she wore.

"Let's get out of here!" She ordered her colleague. The man nodded, and they both left through the remains of the door.

Jake scanned the remains of the store; aside from the hulking form of the Pelican, the only person in the building besides his friends was the third and final robber, currently being held in place by Chase.

Jake exhaled, feeling his adrenaline rush subside. To his right, Nico helped Alex to his feet.

"What the hell were those things?" She wondered. Alex groaned and shrugged.

"Not normal bangers, that's for sure." He said, stretching. "They were way to strong to be normal humans."

"And tough." Jake added. "I hit that chick with a point-blank 12 gauge round and she survived. There's enough Joules of energy in one of those rounds to rip an Elite clean in half."

"Wish I had that right now." Alex moaned, rubbing his back. "Am I seriously the only person in LA without superpowers or advanced weapons or something?"

"Probably, bro." Chase sighed. His captive made a mumbling noise (which reminded Jake of Kenny from South Park), but the boy silenced him with a flick of his switchblade.

"Hey, is everyone still in one piece?" Karolina called out. Jake turned to see her float through the window. Her glow had obviously subsided by now, as the colors of her skin had changed from full-spectrum to more muted blues and reds. "I tried to get the bad guys, but they just took off."

"And you couldn't catch them?" Nico said, sounding surprised. Karolina nodded.

"I saw one of them outrun an SUV doing way over the speed limit." She replied. "Seriously, what the hell are these guys?"

"Let's ask our friend here." Jake said, jerking his thumb in the direction of the robber Chase was holding. The five teens gathered around their prisoner.

"Now let's see just what we're dealing with here..." Chase muttered, hauling their captive's mask off.

What was underneath sparked a series of surprised exclamations from everyone except Jake and Alex.

The robber they'd captured was no older than they were. He had black hair and brown eyes, off-set by the ring running through his left eyebrow.

"Oh jeez, please, don't hurt me." He pleaded. Jake grit his teeth. For some reason, he hated the kid's voice.

"Why shouldn't we?" He growled, placing the shotgun to the kid's temple.

"Look, I didn't want any part of this! My parents made me do this! They threatened to kill me if I didn't help them! Please, you gotta believe me...their evil!"

Silence fell on the group at this last utterance. Looks were exchanged. Finally, Alex spoke up.

"Then welcome to the club." He said, holding out his hand.

And just when I though this night couldn't get any weirder, he thought.

End of Issue One


	2. Issue 2, or New Member, New Problems

Runaways Remix: Teenage Wasteland

Issue Two

Los Feliz, California

1:49 A.M.

Muttering angrily to himself, Jake searched through the mass of shattered food displays covering the floor of the recently-saved Circle A, looking for anything that interested him. On the other side of the store, next to the ice/flavored syrup mixture machine stood the youngest robber, now freed of Chase's knife. He rubbed his neck where the teen had held him.

"So..." He said quietly, looking over the group. "Your superheroes or something?"

"Yep!" Karolina replied happily.

"No." Chase added, in the exact opposite tone.

"Sort of." Alex finished. Jake grit his teeth and sighed. How they could be so trusting of this guy after what had just happened...he didn't know. That, and they were being way, way to open with their personal information. He didn't like it, not one bit. Which was why he was rummaging for the things Molly had asked for instead of grilling the boy.

"Uh, could we finish this later?" Nico pleaded, looking out the window. From where he was, Jake could hear police sirens. "Like, when there's no chance of us getting arrested?"

"Good point." Alex said, turning from the boy they'd been "interrogating" ( in quotations, as he'd been the one asking most of the questions) to the rest of the group. "Lets find some grub and get the heck out of here." He turned back to the kid as the other three teens spread out to find stuff. "You can come with us, uh..."

"Topher." The boy replied quickly. "I'm Topher."

Jake had to clamp his hand to his mouth to stop a laugh. Topher? What kind of name was Topher? Sounded like some generic meat substitute...

"That's a pretty name." Karolina simpered. "Is it short for something?"

"Christopher, actually." Topher replied. His voice seemed full of relief. "And I think I will come with you." He sighed and looked down at his feet. "Don't really have much of anywhere else to go..."

"Wait, hold up!" Chase called angrily, from behind the counter. Jake noticed him stuffing aluminum bottles into his pockets, "Who said this dude could come back to my pad with us?"

"I did." Alex replied simply. "I don't see a reason for him not to. Besides it's not your "pad", it's our base. If we turn him away, Chase-"

"Hey, hey hey, don't use my real name around him!" Chase spat angrily. "Besides, he and his parents just tried to rob this place!"

"I told you that wasn't my fault!" Topher yelled in response. "I told you, my parents are evil! They made me do it!"

"That's what you say." Chase spat back. "Sorry if I don't trust you to much right now."

"Oh not this again." Karolina groaned. "This is just like a couple years ago when you didn't trust Ja-"

"Hardpoint, damn it!" Jake spat. "And before you bring me into this, I agree with Talkback on this one." He looked up from his pile of food to look hard at Topher. Inexplicable anger burned in his lungs and heart. To calm himself, he grabbed the slide of the pump-action shotgun he'd used against what he now guessed was Topher's mom, which he was carrying on his back.

"Oh, not you too." Nico muttered. "Just look in his eyes, both of you. He's obviously been through the same stuff we've been."

"Feel free to do that, Sister Grimm." Jake growled. "Just tell me when they flash yellow and he starts talking in an echoing voice so I can ram my knife through the parasitic snake in his stomach."

Silence fell on the group as they tried to figure out the meaning of Jake's sentence. Alex got it first.

"I highly doubt that Topher's a Goa'uld, Hardpoint. They kind of aren't real." He said. Jake laughed, a single harsh note.

"That's what I though Halo was. Then four nights ago happened."

"Wait, Halo? You mean the video game?" Topher asked in surprise. Jake glared at him, and was about to say something biting, but he stopped when the sirens he'd been hearing for the last couple minutes got much, much louder. Red and blue lights started to flash along the walls of the Circle A.

"It's the fuzz!" Alex called in panic. "Everyone move!"

The group reacted instantly; they grabbed what stuff they could (Jake grunting under the mixture of Molly's food requests and his own supplies, and Nico pulling Topher by the arm) and started to sprint for the van. Jake followed, but stopped. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the Pelican, still sitting where Nico had summoned it. An idea hit him.

"Guys, hold up!" He called. His fellow runaways followed his command and paused, turning. Jake quickly continued.

"The cops will be here any minute. We don't have enough time to get to the van with the stuff we're carrying and get out of here." He jerked his head towards the dropship behind him. "We can move faster if we ride the Pelican."

"That's what that is?" Karolina said in surprise. "You mean like the ship from Halo you were talking about a couple weeks ago?"

"The same one." Despite the situation, Jake felt himself smiling.

"Can you fly it?" Alex asked skeptically. Jake's smile turned into a grin.

"You bet." The words were out of Jake's mouth before he could stop them "And, before you ask, we don't have to leave the van here." He directed this last part at Chase, who had opened his mouth to complain. "We'll use the magnetic clamps to take it with us. They can carry a 66-ton Scorpion tank. I'm pretty sure they can carry a 4-ton van."

"Then let's go!" Karolina cried happy, floating over to the Pelican.

"Right, West Wing it!" Alex added, following her.

The rest of the group, after exchanging looks, followed. Jake opened the back hatch (the "blood tray", he remembered it was nicknamed), and let them in, before climbing into the cockpit. He tossed his mass of food into the copilots seat took up the controls without hesitation, despite the fact he was absolutely sure he'd never piloted one of these ships before. As he started it up, engines roaring to life and instruments glowing green, he heard the beginnings of a conversation between Topher and the other runaways.

"West Wing?" The boy asked.

"Walk and talk fast." Nico supplied. "Alex talks funny, but you're gonna have to learn what he means if you wanna roll with the Children of the Damned."

"Children of the..." Topher started. Jake could almost hear the sudden realization sliding into place. "Are your parents evil too?"

"Basically." Alex replied. He quickly launched into an explanation of how the group had gotten into their situation. Jake, once again, tuned it out; he focused more on getting the Pelican into the air.

He gripped the twin joysticks and moved them forward slightly. The dropship rose with a roar from it's engines and nosed out of the destroyed window. As it passed, Jake heard the far tips of the wings hit something. He cringed, but shook it off. Behind him, Alex wrapped up the Cliffs Notes on the origins of their group. Topher was silent for a moment as he finished, digesting it all.

"Wow." He said finally. "Your like, a junior version of the A-Team."

The runaways fell silent, obviously confused by the reference. Jake, however, got it perfectly.

"Damn right we are, Tofu man!" He shouted back into the troop compartment. "And I pity the fool that mess with us!"

"Talk later, fly now, Hardpoint." Alex ordered. Jake snapped a salute, swung the Pelican around, and snapped the magnetic clamps on, pulling Chase's van off the ground. He dumped fuel into the engines, and the dropship shot skyward. A quick check showed they were heading in the right direction for the Hostel. Behind him, Topher was asking more questions.

"How old are you guys anyway?" He wondered.

"Well, the youngest of us is Bruiser, who's back at base," Karolina added helpfully. "Then there's Arsenic, who's fifteen. Alex, Sister Grimm and I are all sixteen." She smiled happily. "Talkback is seventeen, I think..."

"Seventeen." Chase added quickly.

"And Hardpoint is-"

"Classified." Jake said quickly. "As should all that information you just told him should be."

"Okay then..." Topher muttered. He turned to the group. "Guess he really doesn't like me." He said.

Karolina smiled again and patted the boy's shoulder.

"Don't worry about him," She said soothingly. "You'll like him once you get to know him."

"Sure." Topher didn't sound all that convinced. And Jake was just fine with that.

Something blinked on the Pelican's control panel; a radar screen. Two red dots were blinking at the six o'clock position and closing in on them with every passing second. Jake snapped on the rear-view cameras and swore. Police cars, in hot pursuit.

"Boss, we go inbound boogies!" He called. Alex, startled, snapped his head up. He blinked and looked out the window installed on the blood tray. He saw the cars as well.

"Crap." He spat. "See if you can shake 'em!"

"No doing, man!" Jake called back. "This thing's built for safety, not speed!"  
"I got it." Nico said, though the tone of her voice didn't inspire much confidence in Jake. She stood and gripped her staff. "Open the back." She ordered.

Jake, suddenly seeing what she was going to do, hit the switch. With a hiss of hydraulics, the troop compartment swung open. Nico planted her feet, swung her staff forward, and chanted something, but Jake didn't catch what it was, busy flying the dropship as he was.

He did see the results, though. A massive cloud of black smoke poured out of the troop bay, completely enveloping the pursuing police cars. The sound of screeching tires and wrenching metal came from within the cloud. Nico, job finished, sat back down.

"Huh, weird. Wonder why I didn't create a plane that time," She muttered. "Maybe I can only use each spell once?"

"That would make sense," Alex said quietly. "It is the Staff of One, right?"

"The huh?" Topher sputtered. The group, which up until this point had basically forgotten about him, turned back.

Jake, sensing that the upcoming interrogation continuation wasn't going to need him, slid the cockpit door closed. He'd just turned back to his instruments when there was a quick knock on it. Jake glanced back to see Chase's face pressed against the viewing slit in the door. He opened it again, just long enough for the boy to clamber into the cockpit.

With a sigh, Chase took position in one of the commanding officer's chair behind Jake, the same one Sergeant Johnson sat in during the opening of the Outskirts level of Halo 2.

"Problems, Talkback?" Jake asked calmly. Chase snorted.

"You got no idea, bro." He replied. Jake flipped something on the controls and sent the Pelican higher.

"I have a pretty good one, actually." He kept his voice neutral. "Topher, right?"

"Damn straight!" Chase cried, slamming the armrest of his chair. He stopped, and looked around in fear for a moment.

"Go ahead and rant." Said Jake. "Cabin's soundproof."

Suitably comforted his outburst wouldn't be heard by the rest of the team, Chase let loose.

"What the hell do you think is up with all the girls? I mean, this kid tries to rob a fucking store, and instead of wanting to string him up by his nuts, they're basically dropping their pants and bending over for him! And Alex too! Next thing you know, we'll walk into some room in my place, _my place_, none the less, and see the four of them doing some weird group sex shit! What the holy fucking hell!" He ranted. Jake nodded sagely.

"You wanna hear my theory?" He asked, not at all sarcastic.

"Sure, what the fuck." Chase slumped in his chair.

"He's hurt. Or at least looks like it." Jake fell silent. Old memories fluttered into his mind; the same ones that had been aroused by Nico's outfit during the "meeting" four days ago. He'd had this conversation before...

But just like last time, he crushed them back into oblivion. He hadn't wanted to see them then, he didn't want to now.

He noticed Chase was looking at him strangely. Jake cleared his throat and continued.

"Sorry. Just trying to put what I heard from the dude on TV into Standard." He inhaled, exhaled, pushed on. "Basically, Topher's an injured kid. And in every girl, no matter how tough they may seem on the surface, has a spark of compassion and caring in them. And when there's someone who's been injured around them, that spark ignites. They want to take care of them, just like a little kid. Parental instinct or whatever. Same reason younger girls like to have dolls."

"Well, everyone except Bruiser." Chase said, cracking a thin smile.

"Yeah, well Bruiser's freaking diesel-ass mutant." Jake found himself smiling too.

"Still..." Chase's face fell again as he remembered what they'd been talking about. "We're going to have to keep an eye on this kid. Make sure he doesn't try nothing."

"Agreed. And if he tries something..."

"We'll rip his damn heart out." Chase said, with grim finality.

"Oh Rah." Jake replied. The two boys bumped fists.

Just Outside "The Hostel"

Bronson Canyon, California

2:03 A.M.

With a rumble of muffled jet engines, Jake set the Pelican down in a large crop of trees not far from the Hostel. In seconds, he shut off most of the important systems, leaving just enough power to cycle the blood tray open and shut it. The group climbed out, carrying their loot and chatting with Topher, and started for the Hostel. Jake, pile of food in hand, followed behind at a good distance. Chase fell into step beside him, just long enough to grin, wink, and slip something cylindrical, metallic and damp into Jake's right hand, the one he was mainly holding his loot with. Lacking anything better to do, Jake gave him a nod in response and stuck the object into his pocket.

Already, the rest of the group was moving through the "entrance" to their home. Jake hurried to catch up, wanting to get out of the night. He didn't know why, but something about it made him...uneasy.

Probably to many hours playing Halo, he decided. All the really hard levels in the games took place at night. The _Truth and Reconciliation_, 343 Guilty Spark, The Library, Keyes, Sacred Icon, Quarantine Zone...all night levels.

Could have something to do with all the weird dream/memory things that had been running through his mind for the last four days, too. Who knew what the hell he'd been through and couldn't remember.

But, whatever the reason for having it, his hope of getting in quickly was deflated when he noticed how small the entrance hole was. Not that bad for normally, but carrying a mass of food...

After a moment, Jake started stuffing as much food as he could into his pockets. Though he had a lot of pockets, he had more food. But though he still needed to hold some of it, enough was out of the way that he could get through the hole pretty easy.

He crawled through just in time to see Topher, who was gazing at the interior of the Hostel in amazement, get blindsided by Old Lace.

This action set off a chorus of screams and cries of surprise from the group (including a surprisingly girly one from Topher), and (strangely) a massive, almost nauseating sense of deja vu for Jake. Along with this feeling came confusion;

Where the hell had he'd seen someone get attacked by a dinosaur before?

A snort from Lace snapped Jake back into the real world. Apparently, Chase was vainly attempting to shove Lace off of Topher (despite his earlier voiced dislike of the boy), an action which the dinosaur didn't seem very pleased at. She blinked her huge reptilian eyes at Chase in what looked like contempt. In the background, Jake heard a hurried exchange between Nico, Alex and Gert.

Then those same eyes widened as, slowly, Lace rose off the floor. The runaways (and Topher, to a lesser extent) looked in shock at the floating dinosaur. Chase and Jake, from their positions, saw what was causing it;

Molly, eyes glowing pink and with a huge grin plastered across her face was holding Old Lace up...with one had.

"Old Lace, play nice!" She said sternly, pointing up at her captive. Old Lace looked down at the girl holding her up and growled in confusion.

"Oh thank god!" Topher moaned, quickly scrambling away from Molly and Lace. "That thing was going to...eat me or something!"

"Nah." Molly grinned wider before gently setting Old Lace back down. "She's just playing around. Isn't that right, you big silly head?" She patted the dinosaur's flank as she said this. As she did, she noticed Topher, continued on past him, and glanced over at Jake, or more specifically, the pile of food he was still carrying and had stuffed in his pockets. "Hey, you got my stuff!"

"Yeah. Everything you had on that list." Jake replied. Molly rushed over, gave him a quick hug, and relived him of the food. Laughing softly, she skipped happily over to one of the couches, and promptly started stuffing her face with what appeared to be a burrito stuffed with potato chips and something that came out of a bag labeled "Phunky Phunky Chicken". She stopped for a moment, apparently finally noticing Topher.

"Who's the new guy?" She asked, spraying crumbs everywhere.

"I'm...I'm Topher." The boy stuttered out.

"Tofu?" Molly asked, sounding surprised. "You mean like that weird brown stuff Lucy in the Sky's mom and dad eat instead of meat?"

"No, ToPHER." The look on Topher's face made it clear he'd had to deal with this problem before. He opened his mouth to say more, but Old Lace came up to him and sniffed at his hand. The boy backed away hurriedly.

"Heel, Old Lace!" Gert snapped. The dinosaur rejoined her mistress, but kept her huge eyes on Topher the entire time.

"You have a dinosaur...named Old Lace." Topher sputtered out. Molly grunted.

"And you have an earing in your eyebrow. Nothing so special about that." She said simply. Topher looked at her in shock.

"What are you?" He whispered.

"If you mean Bruiser here, she's a mutant, and the rest of us, we're still trying to figure that out ourselves." Gert finished, crossing her arms and looking Topher over. Alex joined her.

"Topher, this is Gert-"

"My name is _Arsenic_!" Gert growled. Sudden realization filled Topher's face.

"Oh, now I get it! Arsenic and Old Lace! Like the play!"

"Um...sure." Gert said, unsure of what else to say. Alex pressed onward.

"And the girl who with no manners-"

"Hey, I can do what I want now, 'member!"

"-is Molly, who prefers to be known as Bruiser."

"Well, nice to meet you both." Topher said. With introductions finished, the group effectively split in two, Alex, Chase, Gert, Karolina and Nico on one side and Jake, Molly and Topher the other.

The newest runaway tentatively took a seat next to the younger girl. Jake, feeling adrenaline spike in his system, moved closer.

"So, your a mutant?" Topher probed. Molly nodded enthusiastically, throwing chunks of food onto the floor.

"Yeah, but not a bad one like Magneto. A good one, like Doop or Wolverine. And when I grow up I'm gonna start my own mutant superhero team, and we're going to be cooler than the X-Men and kick so much more butt than them and stuff, so you'd better not act prejudiced against me. Or I'll drop this couch on you."

In response, Topher smiled.

"Don't worry," He said calmly, leaning his arms on his legs. "Some of my best friends are mutants."

"Cool!" Molly called. Seeing that he probably wasn't going to be needed, Jake switched his attention to the other half of the team. They were currently in a deep discussion about their newest member.

"So, is there any reason you decided to let this guy join out group?" Gert asked Alex acidly. The boy shrugged in response.

"Hey, he's one of us," He shot back. "If we didn't offer him help, we'd been no better than our parents."

"One of us?" Gert questioned, glowering.

"His parents are eeevvviilll!" Karolina explained, drawing out the last word like someone doing a really bad ghost voice.

"Well if that's our entrance requirement this cave is sure gonna fill fast," Gert muttered to herself. Jake found himself nodding.

"I mean really evil, Gert." Said Alex. "Like our parents level of evil."

Gert looked like (unsurprisingly) she wanted to reply, but Topher joined the group from Molly's couch, Molly herself in tow. Jake saw she was still chowing on her burrito.

"Hey, unless you guys need me, I'm gonna crash somewhere." He said, interrupting himself with a massive yawn. The group exchanged glances.

"Come on, I'll give you the run-through of the place. We'll see if we can find you a room." Nico volunteered. She took Topher's hand in her own and lead him off into the Hostel.

Alex started to say something, but it died in his throat as Nico climbed the stairs and rounded the corner.

"Dude, we told you this was a bad idea..." Chase murmured to Alex out of the corner of his mouth. Karolina, after looking around, spoke up.

"Can you guys do me a favor?" She asked, slipping her bracelet back on as she talked. "If Topher ask about me, could you please not say-"

"An alien?" Gert suggested. "Any reason why?"

"I...I just don't want to get him freaked out more than he already is." Karolina replied.

"I think it's kinda late for that..." Jake added. "He's been supposedly threatened by his parents, shot at, and attacked by a dinosaur...all in one night. I doubt that him not learning you're an alien will do anything."

"Look, I'm just asking, okay?" Karolina's voice took on an almost pleading tone. There was a pause as each remaining member of the group considered the girl's request, then a chorus of affirmatives. Karolina smiled at all of them and moved off to get some sleep. With her departure, the entire group splintered, heading off to do their own things. In seconds, only Jake, Gert, Old Lace, Chase, and Molly were left in the main room. Chase ditched his coat and started to mess around with his Fistigons, Gert sat on the couch and alternately watched him and tried to sleep, and Molly simply passed out, hybrid burrito still in her hand. Gert noticed and removed the snack.

Deciding he wasn't needed here, Jake left them to their own things and climbed the stairs. As he crested the top, the smell of coffee reached his nose. Normally, he wasn't into drinking java (most of his caffeine came from sodas and energy drinks), but he was curious as to what was causing the smell. And, lacking anything better to do, he went to investigate.

He stopped in his room (actually one of four he begun rotating between) and stuck his newly-acquired shotgun under the bed before searching for whoever had coffee.

The trail of smell lead him to a smaller room in what was unofficially called the "East Wing". It was surprisingly spartan as opposed to the rest of the rooms in the vicinity, it's furnishing consisting only of a table, several chairs, a fireplace...and Karolina, sitting at said table. The smell of coffee was coming from the cup held in her hands.

Karolina glanced up to see who had come in.

"Oh, sorry!" Jake called apologetically. Karolina laughed, a strange sick noise, then smiled.

"No need to be. Come on in." She beckoned. Jake gladly sat down in one of chairs opposite her.

"So, what's up?" Asked Karolina. Jake blinked, not really sure what to say.

"Not much, just...got bored, smelled your coffee, followed it...found you." He shrugged.

"You want some?" She held out the cup, sending steam into Jake's face. For a moment, he considered taking it.

"Nah, I'm fine." He said quickly, dismissing the notion.

"Sure, whatever works for you." Karolina took the cup back. Jake shifted in his chair. As he did, he felt the cylinder Chase had stuck in his pocket earlier. He pulled it out. It was an energy drink can, one of the brands he liked. Without hesitation, he popped the top open and drained it. A sudden thought hit him.

"Can I talk to you about something?" He asked. Karolina, looking curious, nodded.

"Sure, I guess. If it's about what happened on that hill by Molly's house..." She blushed and looked down at her cup.

"No, no, this is me." Jake said sheepishly. "I just...well, I need to talk to someone about this weird shit that's been happening."

"Go ahead, then. I'm all ears." Karolina tilted her head sideways, like a cat watching a bird.

"Well, I've been having these dreams lately." Jake began.

"About the...the girl we saw?"

"Yeah, some. But most are, well, not really dreams. Hannah says they're actually memories, which my parents made me forget."

"Yet another thing they've stolen from us." Karolina muttered. Jake nodded.

"The thing is, they're getting...disturbing. I've seen myself do some wrong shit in them, K. Really wrong shit. And then there's this whole thing with these girls..."

"Oh?" Karolina perked up even more at the mention of girls. Jake continued on.

"Yeah. I keep seeing these...relationships that I know for sure never happened. Couldn't happen. But that's not what really weirds me out. I see through my own eyes in these...memories, and the person there isn't me. H'es...I don't want to say evil, but he's not a good person." Jake took a deep breath before continuing. "And I'm worried that this...'other me' from the memories is who I actually am. That what I know of my life is nothing but a sham put up by my parents, and that if I ever regain all of my memories...I'll turn into him."

"Oh geez." Karolina whispered. She put her coffee down and grasped Jake's hand with her own. "Did Hannah-"

"Say anything about it? Yeah. She said that it's not likely. 'Accidental total recall is extremely improbable' are her exact words."

"So why are you telling me?"

"Well, first I wanted to get it off my chest. And, well...your parents were actors. I just wanted to know if you thought what I am is just...a big act. An unconscious one, but an act none the less."

Karolina let go of Jake's hand and sat back, thinking. Finally, she shook her head.

"I think this is who you are, Jake." She said, smiling encouragingly. "If anything, that 'other you' is probably the act. I've seen how you are with Molly. You're good, through and through."

Jake let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. The weight that had settled in his chest as he had told his story lifted. He found himself smiling.

"Thanks." He reached out and patted Karolina's hand, now once again around her coffee. "I think I'm gonna hit the sack now."

"Go right ahead." The alien raised her cup to her lips and took a long drink. "I'm gonna stay up for a bit more. If you wanna talk again..."

"I'll come to you, don't worry." Jake snapped a quick salute to Karolina and walked quickly back the way he had come.

As he did, he felt a familiar cold feeling in his skull.

Hannah was back in his head again.

Well, you certainly took your sweet time, he scolded her. His AI snorted.

_Let's see you sort through a three-billion byte encrypted file in a couple minutes, _she retorted.

So you got something on the Gibborim?

_The wha- Oh, right, them. Yeah, got some stuff. But nothing interesting enough to tell. Just that Gert not only heard about them before, but she did a report on them for school at one point. That, and they do actually have fingers and toes._

Pity. Jake continued walking, heading for the main room again.

_I notice you've picked up a new member._

Who, Topher? Yeah. Found him at the Circle A. Apparently, his parents forced him to help rob it.

_You don't believe him._

Not in the least.

_That's good, because from the readings I got off him, he's not normal. _

Jake stopped dead, all attention focused on his AI's words.

Not normal how?

_Not sure. I haven't been able to get a good scan. But I can tell you this; his biosigns are way wrong. Heartbeat is almost nil, same goes for respiration. And I'm not sure what's running through his veins, but it's not blood. _

Can you confirm that? This might be a problem.

_Of course I can confirm it. But I need-_

To be closer. I can do that.

_Then let's go._

Smiling, and feeling the surge of confidence that filled him every time he knew what he was doing, Jake set off in search of the newest (and possibly most dangerous) runaway.

End of Issue Two

**A/N: Sorry this is so short. There's really not all that much action in the "real" second issue of Teenage Wasteland, so I found it hard to put more in this one. **

**Thankfully, all of this is build-up; You'll get your action before the arc is over. Much, much more than was in the actual one. **

**And as many people have asked, I will say this; no, it's not going to take two years to write this. I think the reason the last arc took so long was that I wasn't really ready for it. I was still in that early fanfiction stage where most of the stories suck and/or are basically self-insert filled crap. I'm far beyond that now. I should have this done by...November, at the very latest (and that's only if school, family, job get in the way and I'm attacked by a rabid herd of Grunts).**

**Finally; if anyone has suggestions for Jake's dreams/memories, I'm all ears. **

**Well, on to Issue Three!**


	3. Issue 3, or Superpowered Teen Angst

**A/N: Well, I guess I didn't exactly deliver on my promise to get this done before November. Computer trouble snuck up on me. But that's all smoothed out now, thankfully, so we're all good to go. **

**And so, not to make you wait any longer, here is Issue Three.**

Runaways Remix: Teenage Wasteland

Issue Three

The Hallways of "The Hostel"

Bronson Canyon, California

2:35 A.M.

Quietly, Jake moved through the halls of the Hostel, searching for Topher. In his hands he held his pistol. He used the tactical flashlight attached to the barrel of his M6D II to light his way as he moved along.

He advanced slowly, checking every room he passed. Nothing moved except him. This part of the Hostel was as dead as it had been before the runaways settled in. No sign of Topher here.

_You could just ask where he is,_ Hannah pointed out. _I never said I didn't know _where_ he was, just I didn't know _what _he was. _

True, but this is more fun.

Hannah sighed in frustration, and Jake smiled. He moved on, glancing into another room. There certainly wasn't anything of interest in it; the ceiling seemed to have collapsed and buried everything.

_And what the hell's with the pistol? We're doing a scan run, not an execution. _

Jake glanced at the handgun, pondering the AI's words.

Why _did _he have it with him? Hannah was right, he wasn't going to kill Topher...at least, he hoped not.

It just...feels right, he said finally. I don't want someone to get the drop on me without a weapon. And I need the light.

_A fair answer. Spoken like a true Spartan. Though I would suggest you put it away when we do find Topher._

Sure. I can do that.

Jake walked a couple more steps forward, noticed that this was a dead end, and turned around. He retraced his steps, then descended the stairs, having found nothing of interest on this floor.

_So, what was that thing with Karolina about? _Hannah asked. Jake stopped, a feeling of embarrassment filling his chest.

What thing with Karolina?

_The one you had just before I rejoined you. I can see the memory rattling around in you head here. _

Hey! I though you said you couldn't see my memories!

_I never said I couldn't. And I'm not trying to; it keeps bumping into me. Your subconscious is still thinking about it. _

Sorry. It's just-

_You're worried about your dreams. _Hannah finished his sentence for him.

Yeah, I guess.

_Wanna talk about it?_

Why? I just did that with Karolina.

_How about talking to someone who actually knows what's going on in your head?_

Okay...

Silence. Jake continued down the stairs.

_Well, tell me about it. What's going on?  
_Oh, I gotta tell you then, Jake thought sarcastically. Okay, you know about those dream/memory things I've been having? Well-

The rest of Jake's sentence was cut off abruptly by the sudden appearance of a jet of flame a foot ahead of him. Jake reacted instantly, throwing himself to the side to avoid the blaze, hauling his pistol up and aiming in the same motion.

His finger found the safety latch and flipped it on when he found the source of the fire; Chase, still messing around with his Fistigons.  
"Whoops." The boy called, semi-sarcastically. Jake glowered at him, tucking his pistol away.

"Thanks for the warning." He growled. Chase simply snorted and went back to his gloves.

"So, what's new with you?" He asked. Jake shrugged.

"Looking for the new kid."

"You mean Tofu? Haven't seen him since Sister Grimm dragged him off." Gert called from the couch, where she was still watching Chase out of sheer boredom and the lack of the ability to sleep. Jake glanced over and noticed Molly was gone. "What do you want with him?"

"Hannah wants to interview him about something."

"Good." Gert grunted. "Hope she finds something out about him. I don't know it this is just me, but there's something seriously wrong with that guy. Gives me the creeps."

"It's not just you." Chase, Jake, and Hannah all answered simultaneously. Jake and Chase exchanged a glance, while the former exchanged something with Hannah.

You think it's cool to tell them?

_I would think so. They obviously don't trust him already. And we could always use allies for this. _

Jake agreed, and turned to let Hannah explain the reason behind their search.

"I've gotten a quick scan of this "Topher" fellow," She informed the two other teens. "And it's not reading as human."

"You mean like how Molly didn't read human when we went to rescue her or something different."

"Not sure. I said I got a quick scan. Which means it's not that good. That's part of the reason we want to find him."

"Try looking for Nico." Chase suggested. "You should be able to find him if you find her. Way she was looking at him when she dragged him off, they won't be apart for a bit."

"Gross." Gert added.

"Oh, I know where he is." Hannah said airily. "Jake just doesn't want to ask."

"It's more fun to find him manually!" Jake protested. Gert simply looked at him, eyes half closed.

"Just ask. The sooner we find out about this guy, the better."

Jake sighed in frustration and defeat.

"Fine."

He started to ask Hannah, but the AI was far ahead of him; a NAV point appeared in his vision, to his right and a good many meters ahead. Nodding his thanks to Chase and Gert, Jake moved out. It didn't take him all that long to reach the indicated point; one of the rooms in the more stable part of the Hostel. Jake remembered it as the one Nico had staked out for herself, and unofficially entitled the "Room of a Hundred Old Dead White Guys" due to the many portraits on the walls (though, ironically, there were pictures of women and non-Caucasians among them).

As he neared it, he noticed the door was closed, and his vision picked out someone kneeling in front of it. A couple seconds later, he could see well enough to realize it was Molly, obviously no longer asleep. On the ground next to her was a notepad and pencil. She glanced away from the door as Jake approached, and placed a finger to her lips; the universal "be quiet" sign. Jake nodded in response and went silent, unconscientious slipping into the same mindset he used when playing the level Truth and Reconciliation. He pressed himself against the wall and glanced at Molly.

Several things sprang to his attention; first, the girl was peering into the room on the other side through the keyhole, something Jake and failed to notice earlier. Second, she was riveted to said keyhole; whatever was going on inside must be interesting. Third, she was biting her lower lip, hard enough to force all the blood out and make her flesh white. She also had her hands fastened around her ankles.

Jake found himself feeling on edge. He opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but closed it moments later. He needed to be quiet right now. He glanced down at his feet; the notepad she'd been using was still there. He snatched it up, along with the pencil. And quick check showed there to be plenty of empty space on the first page; most of it was taken up by scribbles of what looked like a dialog or script. As Jake glanced over them, he realized it was between Nico and Topher. Molly must have been listening to them while they were talking and written it down.

Jake nodded to himself, strangely pleased with Molly, and quickly scratched a message on the next sheet of paper;

**What's going on in there?**

As he finished, he tore that sheet off and handed it to Molly. She took it, scanned it quickly, and motioned for the pencil. Jake handed it over, and she quickly wrote a mistake-filled response;

**i think the new kids eating nicos brain**

Jake blinked, then looked up at Molly, who shrugged. Jake wrote some more.

**Eating her brain? What the hell?**

Molly scribbled back just as fast.

**see for yourself**

She moved out of the way, letting Jake see into the room. He pressed his eye to the keyhole.

It took a moment for his eye to adjust to the constricted viewpoint of the hole, but when Jake could see clearly again he decided it was totally worth it for the information gained;

On the other side, Nico and Topher were making out. Jake suddenly understood Molly's strange behavior and the cryptic message. He found himself both disgusted and awed at the same time. He yanked his head back and snatched up the paper again.

**How long has this been going on?**

Molly grabbed the paper from him almost before he could finish writing.

**couple minutes not sure how long exactly**

Molly mimed gagging and shooting herself as she handed the paper back. Jake nodded in agreement.

**This is really wrong.** He wrote.

**how so**

**It's called voyeurism. It's illegal, I think. Don't know why. **

**yeah, well you're wanted for killing a girl and kidnapping me right and wrong don't mean much to this group **

**That's fair.**

Jake turned away from the door and looked down at the floor.

I really hope you got a good scan of him, he thought to Hannah. Cause I'm not looking back at that again.

_You never needed to look in the first place. I can sense shit through walls, remember? Fifteen meter range?_

Right...

Beneath Jake, the floor trembled. Someone was coming. Molly glanced at Jake, fear in her eyes. Not "life-or-death" fear, but more along the lines of "doing-something-wrong-and-about-to-be-caught" fear. Pretty fitting, considering. Jake felt the same feeling in his chest. Quickly, he acted.

He grabbed the pad of paper, ripped the sheet with the dialog off it, and crammed it into his pocket. Then, he scribbled a couple lines of Halo history onto the sheet below it, grabbed Molly by the arm, and planted her next to him on his side of the door. Molly, seemingly sensing Jake's plan, went along with it. Jake just managed to get himself settled before the person moving, who turned out to be Alex, came around the corner.

"Hey." The bespectacled teen called. Jake snapped a quick salute and Molly waved energetically in response. "What's going on with you?"

"Telling Molly here about Halo." Jake said smoothly. "She wanted to know more about it, and I just so happen to have an AI that has all the answers and a lot of free time, so..."

"It's really cool! They've got, like, lasers that can blow up planets and stuff!" Molly cried enthusiastically. Jake realized she was reading off the page he was holding. Quick thinker, that girl.

"Good. Glad you found something to pass the time." Alex smiled slightly. "Say, you seen Nico?" He asked, semi-offhandedly.

"In there." Jake gestured towards the door they were near. Alex reached up to knock, but paused.

"You might want to continue this downstairs." He said quietly. "I think the comfy chair opened up."

"No, not the comfy chair! It's mine!" Molly shrieked, before rising to her feet and literally hurtling down the stairs, pom-poms on her hat flailing wildly.

During the first couple days in the Hostel, the group had found a large, very well padded chair in one of the rooms that was surprisingly intact, and quite literally the best seat in the house. Molly had developed a strange infatuation with the chair, which as part of the reason Gert bestowed the Monty Python's Flying Circus-inspired name to it. Which was why she had bolted.

Seconds after the girl was out of sight, both boys heard the sound of her tripping and falling down several stairs, followed by her cry of "I'm okay!"

Jake and Alex glanced at each other.

"Take it easy in there." Jake cautioned, standing up and patting Alex on the shoulder. The other boy nodded. Jake grinned, then followed Molly down the stairs. As he left, he heard Alex knock on the door. Guessing what was coming next, he hurried down.

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, Molly was sitting in the chair. She glanced up at him as he came down the stairs. As he neared, Jake noticed that she wasn't the only person looking at him; Gert and Chase were doing the same thing.

"So, is what Molly's saying true?" Chase wondered. "Nico's really swapping spit with the new kid?"

Jake paused for a moment, natural hesitation to giving out information kicking in again.

_Allies..._ Hannah reminded him. Jake mentally nodded.

"Yeah, wish I could say otherwise, but it's true. And I'm not liking it."

"You and us both." Chase said, frowning. "What the hell is going on here?"

"It's a standoff." Molly said cheerily. The other three members of the group turned to look at her. She blinked. "What? There's four of us, and four of them. Two equal teams."

"I wouldn't have put it that way, but it sounds true." Gert added. "Topher has Nico, Alex, and Karolina on his side. Then there's us."

"Well, I think Alex might be on our side pretty soon." Jake added, remembering. "That's his girl Tofu's tongue wrestling with."

"Well that's good to know, but-" Chase's voice trailed off as footsteps decided the stairs. Jake got up and peered around the corner to check who it was.

Speak of the devil...he thought. It was Topher. Jake spun, facing the others.

"It's him." He mouthed. "We gotta look like we're doing something!"

His friends reacted quickly. Chase ignited his Fistigons, Gert took on a look of boredom and watched him, and Molly pretended to be asleep. Finding himself the only person without a cover, Jake started doing push-ups on the floor. Hannah decided that this would be a good time to look over the results of her scan, delved further into Jake's neural matrix.

"Hey, check this out, Arsenic!" Chase called, possibly a little louder than necessary. "I've been messing around with these Fistigon things, and it looks like I can control the fire with my mind!"

To illustrate, Chase launched a burst of flame into the air. Instead of disintegrating into nothing like it usually did, it formed itself into a seemingly solid shape; a square.

"Astounding." Gert said, faking boredom rather well. "You made a square. How very original."

"That's the opening act, man." Chase said, with a sly smile. Jake found himself thinking that the two of them were getting a bit to into this whole charade. "Watch this shit."

Chase suddenly thrust his hands out, as if to grab something just ahead of him, and ignited his Fistigons again with a cry of "Sha-bam!". This time, a strange figure popped into existence; a monkey-like thing, wielding what Jake guessed was a sword.

This alone wouldn't have been interesting, but it coincided with something that was; the sudden appearance of Topher, who walked into the room just as Chase conjured his flaming monkey.

"Holy shit! Did you see that?" Topher cried. "There was...some kind of flaming monkey thing there for a second!"

Chase snorted. "Geez new kid, you need glasses? That wasn't a monkey, it was a blazing samurai. Pretty cool, huh?"

"And you made it? Whoa." Topher gasped. Chase glared at him.

"Course I made it." Chase turned back to the group and jerked his thumb at the boy on the ground. "Who here thinks the new kids a bit slow? Anyone? Just me?"

Topher glared back at him. "I do have a name, you know." He spat. Jake, still doing push-ups and up to about two dozen, smiled.

"Man, Topher's not a name-"

"Its a meat substitute." The other two joined in. Molly made an untranslatable grunting noise, and Jake realized she wasn't faking sleep; she was really out cold. Topher sighed.

"Your joking, right? At least it comes from something normal. What the hell kind of name is Talkback, anyway?"

"One that's better than _Christopher_." Chase sneered. Topher looked like he wanted to say something, but Gert cut him off.

"Keep it down below eleven guys." She said. "We don't want to wake her up. Cause believe me, you won't like her if you wake her up," She indicated the sleeping mutant girl. As if hearing herself being mentioned, Molly rolled over and almost fell off the comfy chair, arm flopping loosely. Jake stopped working out long enough to grab said arm and fold it across Molly's chest, before going back to do sit-ups.

"Uh, I doubt anything we're gonna do will wake her up." Topher noted. "She looks pretty out of it."

"As much as I hate to admit it, he's right." Chase added. "The last time Bruiser powered up, she was a freaking cutting crew."

"The hell's a cutting crew?" Jake asked. "Aside from the name of an Energy Sword spree..."

"What it sounds like. She sawed logs for hours."

"Oh..." Realization dawned on Jake. "Ha ha. Very funny."

"Speaking of sleep..." Topher muttered. "Do any of you do it besides, uh, Bruiser here?" He indicated the sleeping girl again. Jake and Gert made identical snorts.

"I saw a girl be murdered by my friends parents, found a dinosaur in my basement, and knocked my mom out. All in one night." She turned and patted Old Lace, who had arrived at the mention of her name. Gert continued, once again adopting her monotone tone of voice. "I haven't slept in four days."

"Yeah, same goes for me." Jake added finally joining the conversation. "I've been having weird-ass dreams for the last couple days."  
"Oh, you mean like nightmares?" Topher asked. Jake shook his head.

"Nah, more like dark dreams. Leading armies through shattered cities and killing things. Stuff like that."

"Um..." Topher trailed off. Quickly, he shifted his attention to Chase. "What about you?"

"I can sleep, just don't do it in the night." The boy smiled, then sat down and put his still gauntleted hands behind his head. "Say, now that I've got no curfew, I've been thinking about my schedule; I'm gonna stay up til seven, watch some stuff on TV for about and hour, then crash for...where would nine hours of sleep put me?"

"Seventeen hundred hours." Jake said instantly, rattling off in military time. Chase looked at him curiously, so he translated to twelve hour time. "Four in the afternoon."

"Cooool." Chase muttered. "Just in time for the four-to-eight comedy show lineup!"

Topher simply looked at Chase and blinked.

"Well, uh, I guess I'm gonna go crash now." He said. "Should probably get some sleep if we're gonna go out tomorrow." He paused, as if waiting for the group to tell him to stay. The only responses he got were grunts and Molly mumbling something in her sleep that sounded like "cheese doodles". Apparently satisfied with this, he left. The three still-awake runaways exchanged glances. Chase exhaled explosively.

"Well, glad that's over." He said.

Gert and Jake (who stood back up and stretched) agreed. Seconds later, Jake yawned massively.

"You know," He said, rubbing his face. "Sleep doesn't actually sound like such a bad idea right now."

"I thought you said you couldn't sleep cause of those weird dreams." Gert pointed out. Jake shrugged.

"They only happen sometimes. Other times, I like what I see."

"Lucky you." Gert muttered, turning back to watch Chase. Taking this as his unofficial cue to leave, Jake patted Molly on the shoulder, snapped a salute to the other two teens in the room, and left.

His intent was to go to his room on this floor, but he found himself barely able to walk. He managed to get the nearest door to him open, and found it empty except for a red heart-shaped bed.

This will do fine, he decided. With that, he collapsed onto the bed face-first, completely out cold.

Jake found himself falling. Not surprising, this being a dream. What was interesting was the thing he was falling next to, and had apparently just been on; it was some kind of airship, but unlike any he'd ever seen or heard of, and definitely not the red one he'd escaped on in his dream earlier that night. Instead of canvas, the body seemed to be made of...well, flesh. The entire vessel looked like it was a single, living creature.

Jake continued to plummet, amazingly calm considering the situation. His calmness was enforced seconds later; his travels had put him in arms reach of a web of ropes, which apparently encircled the living airship. Jake grabbed one, bringing his fall to a sudden, jarring halt. He took a moment to catch his breath, and check his surroundings.

The airship he was now hanging from was indeed living. From his vantage point, Jake could see it had been made from an animal; a sperm whale, from the looks of it. Other strange creatures moved around him as he hung. Birds circled, wearing strange harnesses that trailed shimmering strands of something that might have been spider silk. A flock of bat-like beast soared by his position, following a brilliant white searchlight. On the ship itself, some kind of lizard scuttled by, pausing only long enough to glance at Jake before continuing.

Jake breathed a sigh of relief; for the moment, he seemed safe. All was quiet, except for a rumble that was felt more than heard, which he could see was coming from the large, black-smoke spewing engine pod several dozen yards from his position.

This quiet was suddenly shattered by a horrifying scream, which came from somewhere above him. Jake glanced up, seeing the origin hurtling toward him. A boy, maybe fifteen or sixteen, falling as Jake had been but certainly not as calmly. His arms were flailing as he dropped, and he managed three full head over heel rotations before he reached Jake's level.

Without hesitation, Jake shot his hand out and grabbed the closest part of the boy to him; his leg. The sudden weight almost ripped his arm out of his socket, but the boy stopped falling.

Unfortunately, all his momentum had to go somewhere; it transferred into him swinging face-first and upside down into the side of the whale airship. Jake cringed, but hauled the boy up. Though slightly dazed from the impact, he managed to grab the ropes next to Jake and right himself, then clip himself onto the lines with something he pulled from one of the pockets in his suit. Jake decided this was a good idea and fished out his own clip.

Once they were both secured, Jake got a good look at the person he had just rescued; angular, almost girlish face, bruised from his recent impact, blond hair cut short, blue eyes wide with shock.

"You all right there, Mr. Sharp?" Jake asked. The boy nodded back, then wiped his hand across his face.

"Aye, sir. Just...blisters." He muttered, voice surprisingly high. Jake ignored it. His voice would probably be messed up too if he'd just been saved from falling to his death. "That was a wee bit close."

"Agreed. How the hell did you fall, anyway?"

"Barking Clanker machine came in low. Had to dive out of the way." Sharp blinked, then shuddered. "Guess I didn't think it through much."

"Well, it's either jump and possibly live, or not and get flattened by into a...squick, right?"

"Aye."

"Well, flattened into a squick on the ship's spine by that plane. Seems like an obvious choice to me." Jake decided. He glanced around, looking for someone. "Where's Newkirk?"

"Don't know. But that bum-rag can handle himself. He's been through battles before."

"Wasn't he up in a Huxley when you got hit by that German Tesla Cannon?"

"Aye. Nearly got burned alive. Would have drowned, too, if I hadn't saved him."

"Thank Darwin we have the amazing Mr. Dylan Sharp aboard to save us all." Jake said dryly, patting the boy on the shoulder. Dylan looked up, back towards the top (the spine) of the ship.

"We should get back up there. The rest of your Yank ambassador mates might be a wee bit worried about you."

"They could use some excitement. And I seriously doubt two airplanes could seriously harm the _Leviathan_ after they installed that armored carapace we gave you." Jake grinned broadly. Something slid into place in his mind; something the "boy" had told him about a day earlier. "Besides, don't you think this is romantic, _Deryn_?"

"Snarf clart." Deryn replied. But he (she, in reality), smiled as widely as Jake.

"Oh, right you have eyes for that Austrian boy. Alek or whatever."

Deryn frowned at him, and started to say something, but a rumble filled the air.

"Barking spiders! That blistering contraption is back!"

Sure enough, the plane Deryn had mentioned earlier soared over the spine. A single winged twin-engined dual cockpit machine, with the a gunner in front and pilot in back. The pilot seemed to notice them, and began a turn back towards their side. Fear filled Deryn's face, but Jake simply held up his hand.

"Wait..." He whispered to the girl. "Wait..."

Another noise filled the air; a rising shriek, cumulating with the sudden appearance of another strange creature. It looked like a jellyfish, bulky blue body trailing four small tentacles. It surged towards the airplane, leaving a black cloud in it's wake. The pilot saw it, and attempted to dodge.

He failed.

Machine and monster collided, and the beast simply exploded, spewing a flaming liquid all over the remains of the plane. Fabric burned, gas and ammo exploded.

The remains tumbled earthward, trailing flame and smoke.

"Barking spiders." Deryn muttered. "What was-"

"A modified Huxley. Anti-air defense version." Jake said calmly. "Another toy we "Yanks" gave you. He laughed softly to himself. "You know, I'm almost glad those Germans sank the _Lusitania_; I haven't had this much fun in years."

"Aye, sir! Well, I wouldn't exactly call this fun, but it sure beats tea parties and sewing!" Deryn exclaimed. Jake nodded.

"Now I think would be a good time to rejoin our friends on the spine." He decided.

"After you, sir." Deryn said. Jake nodded, and together they started climbing the ropes up the airship.

Jake's dream shifted; now, he was on solid ground once more. Though, he quickly noticed, he wasn't at ground level; he was at least fifty feet in the air, inside the remains of what might have been a skyscraper at some point. Rust flakes drifted past his eyes, shaken loose by the wind. He was alone. At least, people wise. He was surrounded by military equipment. Before him was a massive rifle of some form, seemingly the lovechild of a machine gun turret and a sniper rifle. From it's left side came a line of huge bullets, stacked into a linkless ammunition belt emerging from a box on the ground. To his right was a crossbow of some form, a shotgun, and an assault rifle of the M16 run. Beyond those was a military style backpack with his last name on it, a sleeping bag, a miniaturized communications suite, and several empty dehydrated food packets; he'd obviously been here a while.

Jake shifted, making the floor under him move. No, he realized, not the floor; the floating ovoid of metal he was laying on was doing the moving. He, the rifle, and most of his ammo were all on top of this board. It made tactical sense; the metal under him was probably unstable, and he'd easily be able to move from one sniping spot to another if he was on this board.

The movement turned out to be him reaching for more food. His hand returned, grasping a water purifier of some kind. He reached into his pocket and fished out another food packet, ripped it open with his teeth, and dropped the meal (which resembled a finger-sized knot of dried yarn) straight in. The purifier, sensing it, started bubbling, cooking the food quickly. While he waited, Jake glanced through the scope of his machine-sniper gun. The crosshair were centered on a seemingly normal and peaceful stretch of green. The only noticeable thing about it was the large river that ran through it. Snow blanketed several sections of it. For a moment, Jake simply gazed, transfixed by the simple natural beauty.

The purifier let out a _ping_, telling Jake his food was ready and bringing him out of his daze. He pulled back from the scope and tipped the purifier to his mouth, draining his meal in seconds. He chewed for a moment, taking his time. While he munched, he picked up the bag and read the label; SpagBol. As he had guessed.

Jake grunted and tossed the wrapper aside, swallowing quickly. He'd been eating this dehydrated food for several days now, and he still hadn't figured out what the hell SpagBol was. He liked it, though. Which was good, cause he had a lot of it.

Jake had just put the purifier back in it's place when a beeping noise came from the rifle. He reached up and pressed a button on the side, activating the communications suite installed in it.

"This is Hunter."

"Jake, it's David." The boy on the other line sounded frantic, but was keeping it under control. "We've made the drop, but we're being followed. Any chance you could give us some help?"

"Stay cool. I got you covered." Jake replied. "What's your position?"

"We're just outside the factory belt now."

Jake adjusted his rifle as David explained the situation. A quick glance through the scope showed him what he wanted; the speeding form of the boy speaking with him, as well as the friends he'd made the "drop" with. Most were wearing some kind of active camouflage system, making them hard to see in normal light, except for the girl of the group that had done the actual "drop". But Jake's night-scope picked out all forms of radiation, including ones that hadn't been discovered in this universe; and as such weren't blocked. To him, they seemed to glow brilliantly.

"I see you." He said into the radio. "Keep moving."

David answered with a click, the non-verbal affirmative they had agreed upon earlier.  
Trailing behind David and company were their pursuers; five of them, glowing even brighter than their prey.

Jake blinked, then frowned. Whoever they people were, they weren't normal humans. Their metabolisms must be through the roof. He didn't like it.

"David, who the hell are you tangling with?" He asked. "They're glowing like mad on my scope."

"Some new group working for Special Circumstances." David's speech was clipped. "Don't know much more than that."

"Copy." Jake cut the connection, letting David focus on getting away.

Jake frowned, but after a moment of contemplation, shrugged and took the time to check over his weapon again. Whoever these freaks were, they'd be taken care of soon enough.

The exterior of his rifle looked good, no chipping or peeling on the camo paint applied to it. He popped the feed chamber top off and examined it. No visible dust, but just to make sure Jake sprayed a burst from a compressed air bottle into it. Next, he reached inside and wiggled the belt feed itself, making sure it was snug. It was.

Finally, he checked over the ammunition itself. It was in order; two hundred rounds in the feed. He leaned in closer and examined one of the rounds. Again, all in order. 25.4 millimeters, 1.00 caliber or a "full-fucking-inch", by 115 millimeters, fin-stabilized, seethed in a discarding sabot shell, hollow core filled with "electric gel"; an unstable compound that sent a couple hundred volts through whatever it came into contact with.

Satisfied, Jake slammed the top of his gun back down and yanked the charging lever. With a click, the first round slid into place. With a grim smile, he looked through his scope again.

David and his friends had made good time, moving far enough to almost be out of Jake's sight range. But they hadn't been fast enough to loose their pursuers. The five glowing forms were still there, hot on their tails.

But they didn't have to lose them themselves. Making sure the getaway was clean was Jake's job.

Jake adjusted his aim to focus on the five, finger brushing the trigger. In the moment, he felt the fabled "god feeling" snipers had reported; that sudden, glorious knowledge that you got to decide who lived and who died.

But unlike other snipers, who let it all go to their heads, Jake stayed cool. He assessed the situation. The obvious target would be the leader; take them out, and team coherency goes out the window. Of course, the problem here was he didn't know who the leader was. But, with five people in the group, it really didn't matter as much as it would have had this been a bigger group.

So Jake settled his crosshair on the person at the head of the pack, let out his breath, waited for his heart to beat...

And pulled the trigger.

The roar of the gun was deafening. The recoil was just as impressive. Jake grunted as the butt of the rifle slammed into his shoulder. But the pain was worth it; the rider he had targeted tumbled off their board. Jake cringed as he watched the glowing form roll end over end across the ground, lighting skittering across his victim's skin.

A burst of static came from his communications suite; the sensors on it were picking up some kind of transmission. Without hesitation, Jake switched it on. Voices spilled through it's speakers, a mixture of panic, anger, confusion, and surprising calm, in male and female voices.

"Shit, they got Tachs! Where'd that come from?" A boy, panicked.

"What the hell is going on? Smokies don't fight back!" A girl this time, confused and angry.

"They don't wear sneak suits either, Tally-wa. Something weird is going on here." Another girl, just angry.

Jake listened intently, adjusting his aim as he did. He aimed for the back of the pack now, sighting up the last member of the group. Over the speakers, the conversation continued.

"Boss, I've got Tachs's position. I can go get him-" The speaker, another boy, was cut off as Jake fired again. Apparently, he'd hit the guy talking. His second target managed to stay on his board, but slumped forward, causing the board to accelerated and propelling himself into the branches of a pine tree, which ripped him free of his ride and sent rider and board in opposite directions.

"Fausto!" The first female (Jake guessed she was Tally-wa, before remembering the whole naming thing David had mentioned where the last part wasn't actually in the name, meaning she was just Tally) cried. The second girl cursed.

"Ho, get out of here! Get the other Cutters on this!" She spat. One of the three remaining forms seemed to nod, then turn off in the direction from whence this group had come. Jake smiled evilly.

Too easy, he thought. Again he fired. His third shot caught the form (Ho, he guessed) straight between the shoulder blades. He was brutally lifted off his board and slammed into the earth, the force of his crash sending him sliding through a full ten feet of snow before he stopped.

Tally and the so-far unnamed girl both cursed. Both moved away from him, into the trees, either hiding or moving to helped their three downed teammates. Jake laughed softly to himself, and was about to pack up when his rifle beeped again. David calling him

"Hunter."

"Jake, we have a problem."

Jake felt his heart skip a beat, for just a moment. "What's the snag?"  
"One of our hoverboards is malfunctioning. We can't make full speed. We need more time."

Jake glanced out at the two remaining Special Circumstances girls, still hidden in the trees.

"How much time do you need?" He asked.

"Five minutes, ten if you can make it."  
"I can. Get moving. Hunter out." Jake cut the connection on his rifle, dropped the weapon, and stood up. It was time to stop messing around and get up close and personal.

Quickly, he grabbed his shotgun, M16, and crossbow, made sure all were loaded, and strapped the latter two to his back. Then, with a deep breath and a running start, jumped out the rusting remains of the building.

He fell, wind whistling around his head, adrenaline singing in his veins. Five seconds into his jump, his clothing tightened around him and seemed to pull him back, slowing his drop so he didn't end up a pancake on the ground. The slowdown was brutal, like the yank of a bungee cord. Jake bounced up again, silhouetting himself against the moon. Then gravity pulled at him, and he fell once more. But this time, he angled himself down, aiming for the two girls, foot extended in a flying kick. One glanced up, but didn't have enough time to do more than draw in breath before Jake, screaming a war cry, slammed into her. She fell straight off her board and slid along the forest floor, Jake actually riding her back for a moment before jumping off.

"Tally!" The other girl screamed. Jake responded to her cry by swinging his shotgun up and feeding her a face-full of electric gel-loaded shell. She twitched and dropped. Jake turned to the girl he had landed, on, Tally. She was getting up off the ground, dirt covering her face and body. Now that he was close enough, Jake could make out her features; sharp, wolf-like face and black eyes. Hair that might have been blond but was now muddy. Tally glared at him, before spitting out a large clump of dirt and leafs.

"What...are you." She spat out. Jake smiled broadly.

"Name's Jake Hunter." He said. "And I'm your worst nightmare."

Sudden banging echoed through his head, jarring Jake awake. He found himself lying face down on his bed in a puddle of his own drool.

What the hell...he thought. Slightly confused he sat up, rubbing his eyes in an attempt to clear his head.

_Ah, that woke you up. Good._ Hannah's voice sounded far away, like she was speaking from the other end of a long room. Jake shook his head again, and it cleared up.

Was that you with the banging? He asked. Hannah made a grunt that he took as a "yes".

_Sorry, but you wouldn't wake up. Guess that was partially my fault; had to borrow most of your brain power to do the sifting._

Is that why I basically passed out? Cause you needed my brain?

_Yeah. Again, sorry._

Hope it was worth it.

Jake stood and stretched.

What the hell was I dreaming?

_The flying whale or the sniping run?_

The latter one.

_That was you showing Tally Youngblood and company who was boss._

Oh. Please tell me I didn't kill her or anything like that.

_Nah. Though you did knock her out, tie her up to a tree, and take naked pictures of her in some kinky positions with Shay. _

Okay, first, Shay who? And second, what the fuck?

_The second girl in the group. The one you feed electric gel from your shot gun. And apparently that David guy was Tally's boyfriend at some point in the past. You thought it fitting. The pictures are still in your memory, if you wanna see what I'm talking about._

No! Jake actually shouted this last part out loud.

_Okay then. Perhaps you'd like to know what I found out?_

Sure, sure. You finally figure out what the hell Topher is?

_No. I was working on it, but I picked something else up._

Oh? What could be more important than finding out what this freak is?

_How about the fact that he's currently in the same room as Karolina?_

Jake froze, like he'd been sealed in carbonite again. After a full fifteen seconds, he forced himself to breath again.

Where? He demanded.

_Same room you were in earlier. _

Fuck!

Jake spun around and stormed out. As he left, Hannah spoke up again.

_I think now would be a good time to bring out the pistol._ She said. Jake nodded, face set in a grim mask. He grabbed his M6D II and armed it. Cold anger filled him, and he accepted it.

Lets do this shit, he muttered.

This section of the Hostel was lit, meaning Jake didn't need his flashlight. Which was a good thing, since the area was filled with random rubble from the mansion's collapse eighty-plus years ago, and had he been on flashlight alone he probably would have made a good deal of noise stumbling into things. Something he really didn't want right now.

Voices reached his ears; soft mumbling, something that might have been crying. Jake squeezed the grip of his pistol harder.

You got anything? He asked Hannah.

_Nothing worrying. Well, Karolina's body stress levels are through the roof, but that's not out of place. They've been that high for the last four days. But I am picking up higher levels of endorphins. _

What the hell? Endorphins?

_They're the bodies painkillers. They cause a feeling of pleasure or dull pain-_

I know what they are, but why the hell would she have a higher level of them?

_She's experiencing something pleasing, obviously._

Jake blinked, taking this in. As it sank into his mind, something else rose up from within it. For the first time in four days, the Heat returned to his body. He cracked his neck and steadied his pistol.

Let's go find out what's making her feel so good then, shall we?

Still silent, he crouched and advanced, back to the wall and pistol held up in the air. A minute later, he was near the door.

Before he could go in, more footsteps made the floor vibrate. Jake looked around, and noticed Nico moving down the hall from the other direction.

_Hold up._ Hannah cautioned. _Let her go first._

Why?

_Well, for starters, she's on Topher's "side". Second, it's just good tactical sense. _

Never go into a room first unless you have to, Jake quoted from memory. Which was strange, because he didn't remember learning it. He shrugged it off. Wherever it had come from, it was good advice.

So he headed it, slipping back into the shadows while Nico walked past him, unaware. He kept his eyes on her, even as she slipped into the room. Now clear, Jake moved up to just outside it.

Almost the instant Nico entered, a commotion started. Shouting echoed down the halls, in Nico and Karolina's voices. Jake guessed Topher was staying out of the argument. Through the walls (which had been built to withstand an earthquake such as the one that sank the mansion), Jake couldn't hear most of the words, but he heard enough to make his heart freeze again.

"What the hell are you doing kissing my guy?" Nico howled.

That was enough for Jake. Gritting his teeth in anger, he swung himself around the door-

Just in time to get a face-full of mud.

For a moment, Jake was disoriented, causing him to stumble. But the brown gook came off his face fast enough, clearing his eyes to see where it had come from; Nico had summoned it from her staff, and judging by the streak of brown on the table leading from her, had been aiming for Karolina, who was to his right, minus bracelet, until Jake got in the way.

Nico and Karolina didn't even seem to notice his presence. They continued to argue, with Karolina throwing the question "How many guys do you have!" at Nico before throwing herself at her. The two started to fight, rolling on the floor, kicking, scratching and pulling each other's hair.

"Wow. Catfight." Topher muttered. Or attempted to. He got to the "fight" in "catfight" before Jake grabbed him by the shirt.

"What the hell are you doing, freak." Jake spat into Topher's face. The boy looked back, fear in his face, but Jake's senses had been heightened by the Heat; the boy wasn't afraid. He could see it in his eyes. They weren't those of someone fearing for their life, but those of someone watching a plan unfold, changing and adjusting the next steps within their head as things happened.

"I'm not doing anything!" He pleaded. "I was just talking with Karolina, and then she started kissing me-"

"Wrong answer." With a grunt, Jake hurled Topher into the opposite wall, not hard enough to hurt him, but enough to shake some dust from the ceiling. "Now sit down and stay there till I tell you to get up."

Footsteps sounded from behind Jake as Topher picked himself up off the ground; two sets, one lighter than the other, which shook the floor enough to re-raise the dust that had fallen.

Seconds later, their owners showed up; Gert, followed closely by her dinosaur.

Arsenic and Old Lace.

Gert paused as she entered the room, just long enough to get a good hold on the situation.

"Knock it the fuck off!" She shouted. Old Lace backed up her command with a roar that made Jake's organs rumble.

Only Jake and Topher headed her. The two girls continued to fight as if nothing had happened, rolling back and forth across the floor. Gert scowled at them, then turned to Jake.

"Separate them." She ordered. Jake nodded, fine with taking orders from her. Following orders was much easier than thinking, which was something he didn't want to do right now.

Jake reached down when Nico and Karolina rolled back towards him, and, grabbing a girl in each hand, held them aloft by the backs of their shirts. Even like this, they tried to fight, swinging their arms and legs at each other. One of Karolina's random kicks connected with Jake's nuts, sending stars across his vision. He shoved the pain into the darkest part of his mind and kept both girls apart.

"Have you gone absolutely fucking insane?" Gert questioned. "I thought we were friends here!"

"She started it!" Both girls said simultaneously, pointing at each other. Jake would have laughed, had he not been so angry.

"Shut you fucking mouths, both of you." Gert spat back at them. "You disgust me. A couple hours ago, I almost liked you. And now? You're trying to kill each other. And over what?"

"This worthless fucker." Jake added. He didn't think Gert was finished with her tyraid, but it felt good to say it.

"I'm right-" Topher began, starting to get up.

"Hey, did I say you could get up?" Jake roared.

"Uh-"

"_Did. I. Say. You. Could. Get. Up?_" Jake repeated.

"Well, no, but-"

"Then sit the fuck back down! And if you want to keep you brains inside your head you'd better chill."

Topher cringed, and complied. Jake turned back to Gert, strangely satisfied. He jerked his head at Gert. "Go ahead, do your thing."

The girl nodded in response.

"You can let them go, now." She indicated Nico and Karolina. Jake dropped them both, none to gently. Gert now turned her attention to Topher.

"I don't know what your doing, but I don't like it. Maybe you should just leave."

Old Lace seemed to agree with her mistress, growling and sniffing Topher menacingly.

"I'm fine, thanks." Topher said, face sullen. Jake growled and hauled out his pistol.

"I don't think that was a request, meat." He ground out. "Now you can either go under your own power, or I'll haul your corpse out. Either way works for me." He cocked the pistol.

"It _was_ a request, Jake." Gert said quietly. "We aren't our parents. We can't force him out, no matter what we want to do."

Jake glanced back at her, hoping she was joking, but saw she was sincere. He saw the logic in her words, though.

He flipped his pistol's safety back on again and pocketed it. He turned to Gert.

"Let's go, Jake. I don't know about you, but I think this fighting may have finally made me tired enough to sleep." She said.

_Sounds like a good idea, _Hannah spoke up for the first time in nearly five minutes. _I can use your brain again to continue the search. _

"I think I'll join you." Jake said. He started for the door, but Nico shoved past him, heading for the "front door" of the Hostel. Topher, now freed from the danger of being filled with .50 caliber rounds, followed after her, calling for her to wait up. Jake watched them go, followed closely by Gert, who went the opposite direction.

"What was that for?" Karolina called from behind Jake. He turned to see her standing back up, dusting herself off and putting her bracelet back on.

"What was what for?" He questioned.

"Threatening Topher like that. I mean, what's he done? He's just a kid with bad parents, and your-"

Jake cut her off by grabbing her shirt again, this time the front, and pulling her close enough to kiss her. The alien girl's argument died to a surprised mumble, then silence, against Jake's lips.

"That's why." Jake said, releasing her. Karolina stumbled backward, eyes wide. Before she could do anything else, Jake turned on his heel and headed down the stairs.

By the time he reached the room where he had been discussing Topher with the other three members of his "side", Jake could already feel the darkness starting to eat at his vision as Hannah borrowed most of his brain to run her search. Thankfully for him, the two runaways who had stayed down there had shuffled around; Molly was now curled up on the couch, having either moved on her own power or been moved by Chase so he could use her legs as a pillow, which he was doing now.

Either reason worked for Jake. The result was what mattered. The comfy chair was open. Gladly, Jake dropped into it, and was asleep before hit the cushions.

Like there was a film projector in his head that started when he fell asleep, Jake instantly found himself in another dream. But this time, it was different. Unlike the others he'd had, there wasn't any confusion about it; he knew this one all to well. This wasn't some event from his "real" past; this was something that had happened less than a year ago, which he remembered even when he was awake. All to well, as it was, though he really, really didn't want to.

It was dark, late evening in the middle of summer, and he was in a car, his dad's modified to (and possibly beyond) the legal limit canary yellow Ford Mustang, driving along a stretch of Highway 101 that curved close to the Pacific Ocean, separated from the mass of water only by a large ditch on the side of the road and a quarter mile of hills, sand, trees and houses. He wasn't alone. In the passenger seat, leaning out the open window to get a look at a passing pod of Bottlenose Dolphins frolicking in the waves, was one Clementine Jones, better known as either Clem or, less commonly, Jonesy, a classmate and Jake's unofficial best friend. He glanced over at her. Now that the non-dreaming part of his mind thought about it, he realized she looked a lot like Molly, except older; brown hair, green eyes, wiry build. She had the same boundless energy, too.

Behind them and in the trunk (the barrier between trunk and car having been removed by Jake's dad) was a mixture of car-camping equipment, travel supplies, Ophelia, Clem's treasured electric guitar, a pair of Halo costumes, and a large box of Halo-related memorabilia.

He and Clem had been finishing up the last section of a massive, just under a week-long summer road trip from Los Angeles to Seattle and back that they had initiated to celebrate their "Sweet Sixteens" and their newly-acquired ability to drive without an adult in the car.

The trip hadn't been for that only, though. The two had first thought of the idea for this trip when Jake had received and email from a buddy up in Washington wishing he could come to the annual Emerald City Comic Convention in Seattle. When Jake had checked the dates for the convention, and found them open and matching with their new freedom, he suggested that they go. Clem had jumped at the chance. Though the two could have easily gone to the much larger convention in San Diego, they felt that the Sierra Delta Charlie Charlie (as Clem, a bigger Halo fan even than Jake, had called it) was to big and commercial. That, and (much more important to both of them) there was to be a large Halo section to the Echo Triple Charlie. Almost a miniature convention within a convention, according to Jake's friend.

And so they planned their trip; one day to get to Oregon, car-camp for the night, drive the rest of the way to Seattle the next day, either find a hotel there or car-camp somewhere, spend the next two days at the ECCC, and then redo the first two days of their trip, except going back to California.

To Jake's surprise, both his and Clem's parents had okayed the plan, Jake's almost instantly, and Clem's after two nail-biting days and a strange turnaround in their thinking about their daughter.

So far, the trip had gone beautify. They'd made the drive there without incident (though Jake had felt slightly uncomfortable with Clem sleeping less than a foot away from him in the car), shown off their Spartan and Orbital Drop Shock Trooper costumes to great success and nerd-adoration at the convention, played (and won) a Halo 2 Team Slayer tournament on the second day and received a the mass of Halo crap for doing so, taken part in an impromptu rock out (with Clem playing "Blow Me Away" by Breaking Benjamin and the MJLONIR Mix of the Halo theme to vast popularity) and managed to get the first night of their trip home done calmly.

Now, it was their last night on the road, and Jake was eager to get back. Though she wouldn't admit it, Jake could tell Clem wanted to get back too. Seattle had been a bit too cold for their tastes, and they hadn't seen the sun the entire time they were there.

Jake yawned broadly, feeling slightly tired. He'd been running on an energy drink for the last couple hours, and it was starting to wear off.

"Hey, you okay?" Clem asked, noticing. Jake glanced over, seeing her pull herself back into the car, eyes full of concern. He noticed they had a sort of wild look to them as well. This made sense. Late nights brought out the weirdness in people. Jake had heard this called either "night craziness" or "night drunkenness".

Jake shrugged in answer to Clem's question.

"Yeah, just fine. Just thinking about what a good time I had."

"You and me both. That was awesome. We _have_ to do this again next year."

"Oh Rah." Jake pumped his fist. A slow smile spread on his face. "You remember that little kid who we played against in the tournament?"

"You mean the whiny noobish BK who could only get kills with the rocket launcher and started crying when I snagged it first and kept blowing him up in the Banshee?"

"That's the one. I still can't believe he threw a fit on stage in front of everyone."

"Me either. Sore loser, I guess." Clem laughed, a sound that echoed off the insides of the car. "What about that creepy guy with the glasses kept following you around? You remember him?"

"Hard to forget someone who managed to get themselves beaten up by a bunch of dudes in ODST costumes."

"Well, he was annoying you, and you _were_ an ODST at that point, so those guys were technically your brothers or whatever. Helljumpers stick together, you know?"

"All to well." Jake's face fell back to neutral. "I'm just glad to hear there's another Halo book coming out. I was worried First Strike was gonna be the last one."

"Oh yeah. I almost pissed myself I was so excited."

"Wow. That is really disgusting, you know that."

"Sorry. But it's true."

"You really are a bigger fan than I am, I'll say that."

"For now."

Silence filled the car. Jake glanced down at the dashboard; half a tank of gas and no other problems. There wasn't anything to distract Jake from the strange dullness of the open road.

"Okay, now I'm kinda bored." He said.

"Well, I can't have you being bored now, can I?" Clem replied, smiling. Jake joined her. He knew what was coming next. The one thing that broke the boredom of a Halo fan; Halo trivia.

"What's the Master Chief's real name?" Clem asked.

"John. Too easy."

"And what's special about his Spartan serial number?"

"It's a seven reference. One time one times seven equals seven."

"And..." Clem prompted.

"There's some Bible reference. Book of John, couple lines in, says something about an unstoppable force thing or whatever."

"Good, but you really should know the reference itself."

Jake snorted and rolled his eyes.

"Yeah, no thanks. I got a lot of books on my reading list, but the Bible ain't one of them."

"That's fair. It's a free country, you don't have to read it if you don't want to."

"Says the girl going to a private all-girl Catholic school."

Clem glared at him, but in a cute, friendly way.

"For your information," She said, crossing her arms and sticking up her nose, "I don't even read the Bible when I'm supposed to."

"Oh, a bad girl in a church-run school. How cliché." Jake said drolly. "So what, pray tell, do you do in that time?"

"I'm currently rewriting the Bible. My version has Halo people in it."

"Nice..." Jake smile slowly again. "So, who's God?"

"The Precursors. Duh."

"Right, the only people to ever reach a Tier One civilization. Who's Noah?"

"A Forerunner. And the Ark is the-"

"Place where all the Halo's can be fired from. Nice. Mary and Joseph?"

"Captain Keyes and Dr. Halsey. And the Spartan's are Jesus."

"I've gotta read this when you finish." Jake blinked, realizing they'd reached the end of this particular conversation. "Right, back to trivia."

"Sure." Clem took a deep breath and clenched her hands; something she did when she was thinking. Jake could have sworn he heard her say "here goes nothing," but he didn't have time to ask for clarification before Clem started firing of questions.

"Who's brain was Cortana created from?"

"Dr. Halsey's. They cloned a bunch of 'em, only one made it through."

"Who does Cortana look like?"

"Miranda Keyes."

"What's her relation to Dr. Halsey?"

Jake grinned again. "Ah, you sneaky bitch! That's a trick question! No one's sure, but some think she's the lovechild of Captain Keyes and Halsey."

"Alright, then who's hotter; Miranda Keyes or Cortana?"

Jake started to answer, but it caught in his throat. "Wait, what? What the Journey kind of question is that?"

"Just answer it."

Jake shrugged. "Fine. Personally, I think Cortana. I mean, Keyes is a looker and all, but she's too stuck up and military style. Cortana's more like a civilian. I mean, the Chief obviously likes her, but not Keyes. Seems like a good indicator to me."

"That's good." Clem took another breath, then in one breath asked "Okay, who's hotter; Cortana or me?"

This one shocked Jake good. For a full half minute, he couldn't do anything but think and drive.

It shocked him so much that he almost missed the car stopped in the middle of a left curving section of the highway.

"What the fuck?" He howled.

"It's a real question!" Clem shouted back, thinking his outburst was directed at her.

"No, what the fuck is that?" Jake pointed forward with one finger, both hands still on the wheel. Clem twisted in her seat to look forward again.

"What the fuck?" She wondered. Jake took his foot of the gas slightly, slowing the car almost to a stop a good five yards from the other vehicle. The car ahead appeared to be stalled. Jake was about to get out and see if he could help when he noticed that the lights were off, the engine was running, and there was a small light on the dashboard.

"That's an undercover police car." Clem muttered. "I wonde-Oh crap."

"What?" Jake asked, suddenly worried.

"I think we just stumbled on a sting operation."

"A sting? For what?"

"Remember those carjackers that've been all over the news? Maybe this is something for them. The LAPD did say they were going to be cracking down on them."

"Ah, shit." Jake spat. "Well, we should-"

He stopped. He could have sworn he'd heard something. Clem apparently heard it to. She cocked her head to the side, listening.

Now Jake was sure of it; police sirens, blaring full blast and getting closer. Fast.

Jake glanced to his left; rising up above them was a ten-foot high wall of rock, topped with highway guards, on the other side of which was the section of highway going north as opposed to their south. The sirens were coming from further south on it. By now, Jake could see lights from that direction. Headlights, and the swirling red-and-blue lights of a police car.

"You know, maybe we should-" Clem began.

"Yeah, we're going." Jake pressed the gas again, and the car surged forward.

He had just managed to maneuver around the car blocking his path when it happened.

On the section of highway above him, the car producing the light's he'd seen sped towards the same turn he was on well over the speed limit. Right behind it was a police cruiser, the other half of the sting operation that Jake and Clem had wandered into. As the turn approached, the drive attempted to haul the car around it. But he failed.

Instead of turning to the right, the car continued straight, and smashed through the rail guards on the sides. It soared out over the south-bound section of highway, turning upside down and dipping forward as it fell.

Jake saw it coming, and hauled the wheel over to the right, trying to avoid it.

Even now, almost a year later, he still wasn't sure what happened next. Whenever he tried to think of it, all he got was a jumble of images and sounds and emotions. The sensation of a right turn, his tires squealing in protest to it, a horrid noise of metal and glass shattering, a jarring thump that shook his whole body...

And Clementine screaming his name.

Then, nothing. Darkness.  
After an indeterminate period of time, Jake found himself conscious again. Every part of him hurt, and he couldn't see. For a moment, he worried he'd gone blind. He forced his eyes open and was greeted with a blurry wash of color. Well, at least he wasn't blind. But as his vision cleared, he found himself in just as bad a predicament; he was on grass, staring up at the sky. How he'd gotten out of the car was beyond him. Something splashed into his right eye, forcing it closed. He propped himself up with a groan. The road under his hands was wet. It had rained while he was out cold. In fact, it still was raining. How long had he been out for, anyway?

Jake rose unsteadily to his feet. He was a bit disoriented, but he found it clearing quickly. Something ran into his eye again, thicker and warmer than the rain. He wiped it away, and his hand came back red. He must have cut his head.

No time to worry about himself. He had to get back to the road and see what had happened.

Gathering his strength, Jake started walking for the side of the highway. Pain shot up his right leg, making him wince. He slowed, limping. The distance couldn't have been more than two yards, but it felt like a mile to Jake on his bad leg. Finally, he reached the ditch at the side of the road and slid into it.

What he saw on the other side made him stop and drop to his knees.

The roadblocking car was gone, but a standard cruiser, possibly the one that had been chasing the speeding car, was parked a little bit further down the road. On the road itself, visible even through the fresh dousing of rain, were a pair of skid marks. They appeared about a foot from where Jake was kneeling, swerved away a large gouge in the pavement that was scorched and littered with random metallic debris, and into the ditch he was standing in. Slightly afraid of what he was going to see, Jake turned.

Embedded a couple yards from him was his dad's car. It was buried so far into the loam of the ditch that Jake could barely see the front wheels at all.

Then he realized that was because the front end was gone, compressed into itself by the impact. The back end of the Mustang had done little better. One of the rear wheels had exploded at some point, and the remains were still wrapped around the rim. The rear window was pulverized, and several still-smoking dents in the trunk showed had been removed by external forces.

While he stood there, Jake heard voices, coming from the direction of the police car. He glanced over to see that there were three more vehicles there as well; a fire engine, a tow truck, and attached to that truck the smoking, charred remains of the car that had started this whole disaster. From what Jake could see, the driver hadn't made it. Visible through the remains of the driver's side door was an extremely charred arm, and Jake could smell cooking meat. The guy must have been flash-cooked the moment he hid the pavement; the speeder died a speedy death. How ironic.

Despite the grimness of the situation, Jake found himself smirking. Clem would just love this-

Clem.

Knowledge nailed Jake worse than the crash had; he hadn't seen the girl since he'd woken up. Where the hell was she?  
In a panic, Jake twisted sideways, sending brutal surge of pain through his bad leg. He cursed and fell. For a moment, he thought he was going to black out. But the pain receded, and he managed to get up again. He stood, shakily, and looked around, slower this time.

He found Clementine seconds later. She was a yard away from the crashed Mustang, laying face up on the ground. Jake stumbled over to her side.

She looked bad; her skin was deathly pale, her hair matted with blood. A large bruise was forming on the side of her face, and Jake could see more bloodstains on her clothes.

But, despite this, she was still alive. Jake could see the soft flutter of her heart in her chest, weak though it was, and the slightly erratic cycle of her breathing. Jake took comfort from this. Behind him, the tow truck took off, dragging the destroyed car with it.

Clem groaned and coughed. Jake turned his attention back to her. The girl opened her eyes weakly, and Jake helped her sit up.

"Hey, welcome back." He said softly. "I think you're gonna be alright."

Clem coughed again, then looked at him. "Jake..."

Jake didn't hear her. He kept on talking, almost unable to stop.

"Oh man, my dad's gonna kill me. That was his favorite car, you know? Hey, when they ask, you'll back me up that this wasn't my fault, right? I mean, that idiot drove off the road onto us-"

"Jake." Clem said more forcefully. Jake continued, even though he'd heard her this time.

"And I really hope they don't forbid us from doing this again next year. But if they do, I guess we can still hang out, right? I mean-"

"Jake, listen." Clem commanded, grabbing his arm. Jake stopped and obeyed.

"What?"

"Stop lying to yourself. You know I'm not gonna make it."

"What?" Jake glanced down at her again. Now, he could see something that he'd missed last time; around her middle was a mass of gauze, soaked through with blood. Lower, he could see that her right leg was twisted almost all the way around.

Jake felt sick and dizzy. "Oh shit-"

"No." Clem barked, though weakly. "No pity, no weakness. Not from you. This isn't your fault, and it's not mine. There's nothing you can do now."

"But you-"

"No buts." Clem looked at him. Jake could see there wasn't any hesitation in her eyes; she had accepted her fate. "Now shut the fuck up and listen."

Jake swallowed his nausea and nodded. Clem continued.

"I need you to do two things for me," She said. "First, take these to my parents. Tell 'em I love them." Clem reached into her shirt, and dug out something on a metal necklace. Some_things_; a pair of metal plates. Jake recognized them instantly.

"Your dog-tags..." He whispered. Clem nodded, and pressed the two tags into Jake's hand. He looked down at them, then gently slid them into his pocket.

"What else do you want done?" He asked.

Clem looked over his shoulder. Jake saw she was looking at the Mustang.

"Ophelia...get Ophelia." Clem murmured. It took Jake a moment to remember that this was the name of her guitar. He nodded and hurried to the car. From this angle, he could see the two doors in the front had been removed manually; dents in the frame showed where the paramedics or firemen or whoever had used a hydraulic ram to rip them off. He leaned inside. Luckily for him, the contents of the trunk had slid forward during the crash, and atop this pile of stuff was Clementine's guitar. He snatched it and made his way back. He gave the instrument to Clem, who, looked at it fondly. She strummed it, flicked on of the strings and adjusted the length with one of the knobs on the top (there was a technical name for it, but Jake couldn't remember it, along with quite a few others things), and kissed.

"Take good care of her." She said, handing it to Jake. Gently, he took it and slung the strap across his back. Clem glanced at it, as if making sure it was secure, then back at Jake.

"So...is there...anything else I could do?" Jake whispered. Clem blinked, sadly, then smiled.

"Would a kiss be to much to ask?"

"Not at all."

Gently, Jake pulled her closer and pressed his lips to hers.

This was Jake's first real kiss, and it wasn't anything to be really proud of. It was awkward, neither partner really sure what to do. But quickly they eased up, and melted into the kiss. Jake held it for as long as he could, only breaking away when he needed to breath. He smiled slightly, feeling light-headed.

"I love you." Clementine whispered. Jake sighed and pulled her closer.

"I love you too." He answered. The girl sighed, and relaxed into his shoulder. Jake held her for a full minute, then turned to say something else, stomach flipping giddily.

The feeling went away when he noticed Clementine was gone. For the last minute, he'd been hugging a corpse.

Jake looked at her face, strangely peaceful. With a final hug and one last kiss, he closed her eyes and placed her on the ground.

Now the dream began to differentiated from the real memory. In real life, Jake had sat next to Clementine's body till the ambulance had arrived and rode with it to the hospital to face his parents and hers. But in the dream, Jake stood, anger in his veins. Above him, storm clouds gathered, lighting flickering inside them. Jake howled to the sky, raising his fists in anger, and in the growing dark he could had sworn he saw them glow with a brilliant blue light, as if plasma or electricity was running through them. The light intensified, Jake howled-

And he was brutally jerked back into reality by Hannah.

While he was still regaining his composure, Alex and Nico ran into the room, hand in hand, and started shouting at them to get up. With a groan, Jake forced himself off the couch. He found his eyes blurry, and he wiped them off. To his surprise, he realized he'd been crying during his dream. He brushed the thought away as easily as the tears themselves.

Around him, his fellow sleepers complained about the sudden awakening.

"Damn fucking figures." Gert swore. "Takes me four days to fall asleep, but four seconds to wake up."

"If this is a drill or some other shenanigans, I'm gonna kill someone." Chase growled. The only member of the group who didn't complain was Molly, who was still asleep. Instead, she made sucking noises and started to trust her hips against the couch.

"Complain later." Alex said quickly. "Where the hell is Karolina?"

"Not a clue." Gert said, stretching. "Haven't seen her since that brawlfest upstairs. Why?"

Alex paused, catching his breath. Nico jumped in.

"It's Topher. You guys were right; he's no good. He's a monster."

"Woah, we were right?" Chase sounded amazed. "Nic-Wait, monster? You mean like our parents?"

"No, worse. He's not human." Nico looked glanced around nervously. Jake noticed there was a trail of blood rolling down the side of her neck.

"I knew it." Gert growled. "Old Lace smelled something funny about that guy the moment he stepped in here."

"But what is he?" Chase wondered. "I mean, I know he's not human, but what kind of-"

"I think I have an answer." Hannah spoke up. All eyes turned to Jake.

"Well? Out with it."

"It would appear, according to my data, that our friend Topher is a vampire." Hannah said. "And if my sensor readings are right, he's coming this way now. And he's mad."

Oh fucking shit, Jake thought. What next?

End of Issue Three


	4. Issue 4, or Steaks, Anyone?

Runaways Remix: Teenage Wasteland

Issue 4

The Main Room of "The Hostel"

Bronson Canyon, California

3:14 A.M.

"Wait, your serious?" Chase exclaimed. "A _vampire_? You mean, like, the things Buffy stakes?"

"Yes, for a lack of a better explanation." Alex answered, looking over his shoulder. Jake understood his worry; from what Hannah was showing him, is body was in full _fight-or-fight_ mode.

"For real?" Gert question, amazed, sitting up abruptly. "I mean, considering my present company, I shouldn't be shocked, but I am. Are you _sure_ he's a vampire?"

Alex and Nico exchanged a look, and Jake's eyes once again fell on the line of blood coming from the Asian girl's neck.

"Yeah, we're sure." Nico concluded.

"It doesn't really matter _what _he is, but where." Alex continued. "Specifically, the fact that he's coming _here_."

"So let him." Chase said, voice turning cold. He slammed one Fistigon-encased fist into the palm of his other hand. "I've been wanting to give this kid a good pounding since he got here."

"Got your six, Talkback." Jake called out, pulling back the slide on his M6D II. Chase nodded his appreciation.

"Did you know hear what I just said?" Alex cried. "Topher is a _vampire_!"

"We know." Chase and Jake said simultaneously. Alex blinked at them in surprise.

"And you want to fight him?" He said, sounding as shocked as he looked.

"Vampires burn." Chase said simply, igniting the vents on the back of his Fistigons. He grinned menacingly. "And they say you don't learn anything from TV."

"They aren't that tough anyway." Jake agreed, cracking his neck. "They're more of a nuisance than anything else. Buffy sure doesn't seem to have any trouble with them, and she's like, mostly human."

_And you _are_ the guy who single-handedly killed the entire Cullen clan on your last trip to Washington..._ Hannah added.

Mentally, Jake blinked.

Really? I don't remember that. All I remember-Oh, right. Stupid neural block

_Yeah. But believe me, when you were done, the streets of Forks were running with the "blood" of the undead._

Awesome.

"That's TV, Jake." Alex argued, having not heard any of Jake's internal dialog. "Buffy doesn't exist."

"And yet you are being chased by a vampire." Chase added, eyes narrowed.

"And Jake's a Spartan." Gert interjected. "You said Halo wasn't real too, and, well..."

She indicated Jake, more accurately the pistol in his grip.

"Look, this is isn't a discussion anyway." Jake continued. "Talkback and I are going to stay here and kick this fuckers ass. You can run if you want, or stay here and help." Jake felt an evil smile spread across his lips. "Actually, go ahead and run. It's more fun to kill someone 2v1."

"Jake-" Alex cut himself off with a sigh, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Shit. Look, _we don't have time for this_! We have to leave, now!"

"What the hell is going on down here?" A voice called from the stairs behind the group. Everyone turned (except Molly, who was still out cold, and Alex and Nico, who were looking in that direction already) to see Karolina coming down the stairs, wearing sweatpants and the yellow shirt she'd donned during the events of four nights ago, the assemblage of clothing that she usually wore when she went to sleep. Apparently she'd gone to bed during the time Jake was out cold.

"Seriously, I'm trying to get some sleep here-" Karolina stopped when she noticed Nico standing amongst the group. "Oh, your here," She said coldly. "Done making out with Topher?"

"I wasn't making out with him!" Nico cried back. "He tried to _eat_ me!"

"Oh, well that's a surprise." Karolina said acidly. "And here I was thinking you'd be all to willing to bend over and spread your legs for him-"

"Not that kind of eating, you dumb whore! He was trying to drink my blood-"

"Again, I would have thought you'd be into that sort of kinky thing. I mean, come on, you dress all gothic and you're a fucking _witch_-"

"If most of your body weight wasn't in your tits you'd be able to see that there's no _way_ I'd be into that-"

"So _my _tits are huge then, huh? Apparently Alex thinks _yours_ are bigger. I heard you two last night, moaning and trying to talk dirty-"

"Look, could you two argue later?" Alex cut in hurriedly. From the look on his face, Jake guessed he wasn't jumping in just because they were in danger of being attacked by a vampire.

"Shit, it's like the Real Life in here." Jake heard Chase whisper to Gert. The girl nodded. The three arguing teens missed the comment, which Jake only heard thanks to his enhanced hearing.

_I am _so_ recording this for archiving,_ Hannah informed Jake. _Chase is right. This is even better than a sitcom._

"What, you don't like me bursting your little bubble of contentedness around your sex life?" Karolina twisted to look at Alex, unaware of the comments going on around her.

"No, it's because we need to get out of here, _now_." Alex paused long enough to move between Chase and Jake and get into a more equal hight with Karolina. "I need you to fly Molly out of here."

He indicated the girl, still asleep on the floor.

"Wait, what?" The rage in Karolina's face drained, replaced by confusion.

"Can. You. Fly. Molly. Out. Of. Here?" Alex growled, annunciating ever word. Understanding dawned on Karolina's face.

"No, I don't think so." She said, the anger leaving her voice. "My glow's gone completely. I think I'm dry."

"Take your bracelet off. We need to be sure." Alex's voice had taken on a decidedly worried tone, more noticeable than earlier.

"My bracelet _is_ off." Karolina answered. She held up her wrist. Sure enough, the metal band was gone. "I took it off before I went to bed." Karolina explained.

Wonder when she started doing that, Jake wondered to himself.

"Shit." Alex spat. He fell silent for a moment, and Jake noticed his eyes were darting around, which Hannah informed him was the physical movement associated with someone searching their mind for a solution. "Well, carry her to Chase's van at least. We need to get out of here before fast."

"Yeah." Nico added, unnecessarily in Jake's opinion. He guessed she was talking in an attempt to relive her worry. "Topher's down for now, but he's not-"

Nico was cut off again, this time by a cough, which came from behind her. She and Alex spun around to look at the source of the noise. The rest of the group simply shifted their attention.

Standing in the entryway to the Hostel was Topher.

Instantly, Jake slipped into Spartan Time, reflexes triggered by the surge of adrenaline caused by their recently-confirmed enemy's appearance. With the time afforded him, he noticed several things; first, that there was a large hole in the boy's shirt, but the skin underneath was completely fine. Second, in his hand he held Nico's staff. As Jake looked closer, he noticed smaller, more disturbing things; Topher's eyes had changed from the brown of earlier to a sort of metallic goldish color, and the pupils have become more cat-like, vertical as opposed to the human-normal circular.

On a hunch, Jake glanced at his mouth. Sure enough, Topher's canine teeth had gotten a lot bigger, resembling the stereotypical vampire's fangs.

Guess he really is a vampire, Jake thought to himself. Awesome.

_Oh, I'm recording this too,_ Hannah pipped up. _It's been _way_ too long since I saw a Spartan kick ass._

Time resumed it's normal course for him.

"-Out?" Nico finished.

"Oh, I'm very much in." Topher replied. Jake noticed his voice had changed to. Now, it was deeper, more..._evil_, he guessed. There really wasn't any other word to describe it.

Jake didn't give himself, or anyone else, time to think about it. Even before Topher finished talking, Jake swung his M6D II up, braced himself against the recoil, and fired four shots.

The result was quite a bit more spectacular than Jake expected; all of his shots hit their targets (one to each knee, one to the chest, dead center of the hole in his shirt, and the final one right between Topher's creepy gold eyes), but the damage they did was much higher than Jake had predicted. The 12.7 millimeter (or .50 caliber, depending on which measurement system you were using) magnum rounds, designed to break energy shields and crack Covenant personnel armor, punched through Topher's unarmored flesh without any resistance. The boy's knees effectively disintegrated, a three-inch wide hole appeared in his chest, and his head snapped back with enough force to basically liquefy every bone in his neck. The contents of his skull followed the round out, forming a strangely black mist behind him.

Like a puppet without strings, Topher dropped to the ground with a wet _crunch_. Jake lowered his pistol, calmly watching the smoke from it's firing curl from the barrel. His ears rang from the pistol's blast, and his palm tingled from the recoil, but other than that he felt strangely good.

"Hhn." He grunted. "That was easy."

He glanced at the rest of the group around him. They hadn't really moved, except for Gert, who'd clasped her hands over her ears when Jake had fired, and Old Lace, who had moved closer to Gert. They seemed shocked by Jake opening fire, especially Karolina, who's face had taken on a distinctively red hue and clasped her hands over her mouth. Jake also noticed she'd pressed her knees together, both of which confused him. Everything he'd heard said that someone's face turned _pale_ when they saw something that shocked them. And he didn't know what to think about her legs.

Guess that must have shocked them good, he said to himself.

_Understandable, _Hannah replied. _They are, technically, civilians. I doubt they've ever even seen a real gun before. And that take down _was _pretty brutal. _

You disapprove?

_Not at all. Well, I'm surprised you didn't shoot him in the nads, but that's a minor detail._

Jake mentally grunted in response. He glanced around at his friends again. They were still mostly motionless, except Nico had grabbed Alex's hand.

"Sure, don't all thank me at once." Jake said sarcastically.

This seemed to shake the group from their shock.

"Come on, we need to move while he's down!" Alex ordered, pulling on Nico's hand. Gert and Chase looked at him in confusion.

"While he's down?" Chase asked in disbelief. "Dude, Jake just put a half a dozen slugs into him! He's not getting up ever again!"

"Well, actually it was four, but still..." Jake noted quietly.

"He's not human, remember?" Nico called back. "I rammed him through the chest with my staff and he survived!"

_Well now we know where the hole in his shirt came from_, said Hannah.

"You rammed your staff through him?" Jake said, raising his eyebrow. "Any particular reason why?"

To himself, he added "Other than the obvious sexual innuendo possibility..."

"I thought it would kill him! You know, like a stake! But it didn't work. The staff went through him, and then the hole just...healed up. He said 'Whedon got it wrong. Stakes don't kill vampires, they just give us heartburn.'"

"Of course it didn't work!" Karolina commented. "It has to be sharp! And made of actual wood, not whatever your staff is..."

Great...Jake thought to himself. Just fucking _great_.

_Agreed,_ Hannah concurred. _So much for him being _Vampiricus Whedonus_. This certainly complicates things. _

Vampiricus _what_? Jake sputtered.

_It's a classification system for supernatural creatures. First part is the genus; vampire, werewolf, zombie and the like, and the second is sub-species. Usually named after who first recorded them. _

Oh...wait, Whedonus...Joss Whedon! The guy who writes Buffy!

_Exactly. Now let's just hope this guy isn't Meyerus. _That would be a problem._..Though considering the staff went through him instead of bouncing off and he's not pale as all get out, he's probably not..._

Okay, I think I got it, Jake said. Hannah fell silent.

Jake glanced over at where Topher's still body lay. He kept his eyes on the large hole in his chest. Sure enough, as he watched, it became visibly smaller.

"Shit..." He muttered. "Alex is right, this bastard's healing himself up." He raised his pistol again.

"Jake, there's no time! We have to leave-" Alex began.

"Shut up." Jake spat, cutting him off. "You can run if you want. I'm going to stay here and make sure this prick _stays_ down."

"But he can regenerate from anything you hit him with!"

Jake simply turned to face Alex, face pulling into the evil grin from four nights again.

"Oh, I'm counting on that." He said, then laughed darkly. "I've got a couple of..._tests_ I'd like to run on our friend here. Finally put to rest some fanboy rumors regarding vampires, you know."

Alex simply turned pale and turned back to the others.

"Alright, stay here if you want. Just stall him as long as you can so the rest of us can get away."

"Hey, who said I was leaving?" Chase asked defiantly. "I want in on this ass-kicking too!"

He turned to Jake and grinned. "Now I've got _your_ six." he said. Jake nodded in appreciation.

"Fine then, but the rest-"

Alex paused. A loud rustling, whispering noise echoed off the walls of the room.

"What the hell..." Gert muttered, looking around. Old Lace growled softly as well, crouching next to her mistress.

"Wait, where's Topher?" Karolina called out, voice sounding a little weak. Jake turned in horror. Sure enough, the space where Topher's body had been was empty. The only evidence that he'd been there at all was a small pool of blood, black as crude oil.

The rustling noise returned, coming from the upper floor of the room. Jake pivoted, pistol raised, tracking the noise. He could hear it, but he wasn't able to get a visual. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that the rest of the group had joined him in his search.

"Where are you, damn it..." he muttered.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement; nothing much, just a blur, but enough to give him something to track. He focused on it.

It didn't _look_ like Topher. Actually, it didn't look like anything. Just a warping, rippling blur in the air, like a heat haze. Lacking anything else to do, Jake fired at it.

The bullet caught the distortion dead center, and for a moment it solidified. Sure enough, it was Topher.

What the fuck is this? Jake wondered to himself. When the hell did he become Speedy-fricking-Gonzalas?

_Shit, I've heard about this,_ Hannah muttered. _He's moving into a parallel dimension. I thought that ability was only present in Taken..._

Say what now?

_It's like a personal Slipspace. Distances are way shorter for him. That's how he can move so fast._

Well fuck us then.

Distracted by his internal conversation, Jake lost sight of the blur that was Topher. With a growl, he cast his eyes around again, trying to get a visual on him again.

As it happened, Karolina got it before he did.

"Nico, behind you!" She howled, pointing behind the Asian girl, a look of fear on her face.

Jake spun to face Nico, just in time to see the girl spin as well, turning to face her attacker. Both teens watched the same thing happen;

Topher seemed to come out of nowhere, simply solidifying from the blur that had been moving around the room. In his hand he again held Nico's staff. Before anyone (even Jake) could do anything, Topher swung the staff, a brutal two-handed sideways slash that caught Nico straight in the chest. The blow sent the girl flying, and her momentum carried her into one of the relatively-undamaged pillars situated around the room. She hit it with enough force to crack it, then fell to the floor with a soft _whump_. She didn't get up.

"Doesn't feel very good, does it?" He asked the still Asian girl.

"No!" Alex howled. He spun, looking for something to fight Topher with. The vampire boy didn't give him the chance. He blurred up again, then reappeared behind Alex and simply punched the boy in the chin, an uppercut hard enough to knock his glasses clean off. Alex dropped as well.

Jake, seeing an opportunity, fired again. The round caught Topher in the chest again, and he stayed solidified.

"Chase, now!" He yelled.

Chase responded without question; as Topher stumbled around, the hole in his chest healing up, Chase let loose with a long burst of flame from his Fistigons. Topher stumbled backward, recoiling from the wave of fire.

Perfect, Jake thought to himself. He can't disappear when he's on fire.

"Keep the heat on him!" He shouted to Chase. "Keep him solid!"

"With pleasure!" Chase cranked up the heat, two additional vents on each Fistigon spewing flame. Topher howled at, but Jake noticed it wasn't a scream of pain. Despite the torrent of fire that was surrounding him, Topher wasn't burning. There was smoke rising from him, and his shirt and pants were practically scorched off, but his skin was fine.

Better do something about that...Jake thought. He dropped to his knee and aimed down the sights of his pistol into empty space. But it wasn't empty for long; Topher, still being driven back by Chase, stumbled into his sights.

Jake pulled the trigger.

The shot caught Topher's shoulder, sending him spinning off into the corner and releasing an impressive spray of black blood into the air.

"And stay down!" Chase howled, seeing the boy fall. He charged forward eagerly, caution forgotten in the rush of battle.

This was a mistake on Chase's part. Before he got to where Topher had landed, the vampire got back to his feet, the wound on his shoulder healing up before Jake's frustrated eyes.

"Huh, you think that's gonna stop me?" He said, face turning into a disturbing grin.

Chase came to a stop, stumbling and almost falling backwards. Topher took advantage of the boy's unbalance and lashed out. His foot caught Chase in the midsection and sent him tumbling across the floor, to come to rest next to Nico, who was just starting to get up.

_This isn't working..._Hannah said to Jake.

No shit. You think you could find a way to kill this prick?

_Working on it..._

Work faster.

_Just keep stalling him and I'll get it done. _

I can do-

Jake's thought process was suddenly and violently cut off by the sudden collision of Topher's fist to his face.

Pain followed a second later, drowning out pretty much everything else in Jake's mind. Brilliant white starts filled his vision, then evaporated, replaced by a spurt of what Jake realized must be his own blood. He felt the bone and cartilage of his nose give way under Topher's fist, the force of the blow more akin to being nailed by something metal as opposed to flesh and bone. Dimly, he could hear Hannah crying out as well.

Stunned, Jake fell, rolling down the slight incline of the broken floor to a stop a couple feet from the rest of his downed friends.

Ugh...fuck, he thought.

He tried to get up, but nausea rolled through his head and he sank to the floor again, closing his eyes to try and stop the room from spinning. Something warm and wet was running down his face, across his face and off his chin. He tasted some of it; coppery. Blood from his broken nose.

Above Jake, Topher glanced around, observing the damage he had done.

"Well, that was refreshing," He said out loud. "I haven't had a good fight like that in decades."

He chuckled to himself. Jake grit his teeth and pushed himself up on a chunk of marble pillar.

Yeah, keep laughing, prick, I've got your number...he thought. He inched forward slowly, both to avoid Topher's unwanted attention and to keep the world from doing 360 no-scopes on him again.

Topher certainly didn't seem aware of him. The vampire was currently stroking his chin, observing something out of Jake's line of sight, which was currently cut roughly in half by the pillar he was using to move.

"Decisions, decisions..." He said, obviously to himself, but out loud at the same time. Jake guessed that the boy liked to talk to himself.

_Ugh...correct,_ Hannah added, sounding similar to how Jake felt. _When you live as long as vampires do, you tend to become very introspective._

Glad to have you back, Jake replied sarcastically. He glanced back over at Topher, who hadn't moved.

What the hell happened?

_Neural backlash. Basically, what you feel, I feel. So, if you would kindly not get punched in the face again..._

Okay. Got it.

Jake crawled forward again. Now, out of the corner of his eye, he could see what Topher was looking at; Karolina, who was cradling the still-asleep Molly in her arms.

What blood remained in Jake's face drained out.

Oh no. Please don't tell me he's trying do decide which of them to suck blood from.

_Well, he _is_ a vampire, so there' s a 92.61 percent chance that-_

I just said don't tell me!

Unaware of Jake's observation, Topher continued to talk to himself.

"Hmmm...mutant blood, or blond? Haven't had either in a while...though mutant blood is harder to find...yes, I think I'll have that first. Airhead blood is better as a dessert any way."

The vampire boy smiled, then strode forward, once again out of Jake's line of sight.

Shit, shit, shit...Jake muttered. This is bad. Gotta get up, gotta help Molly and Karolina...

With a grunt, Jake heaved himself to his feet...and promptly feel right back down again.

Another wave of nausea hit Jake, and this time it was worse. His stomach heaved, and he fought not to hurl.

A second later, he lost the fight, and promptly vomited up what little he had in his stomach onto the ground before him.

Shit, oh shit...Jake gasped, trying not to vomit again. He pushed himself forward a good foot or so, trying no to look at the pool of his own stomach content.

What the fuck is going on? Jake howled in his mind, directed primarily at Hannah. I though I was a Spartan! Why the hell did I get incapacitated by a single freaking punch?

Hannah didn't answer, but he heard something from the other side of the pillar he was resting on; soft whimpering noises that he realized were Karolina, and a quiet, deep laugh. Topher.

Shit. I'm too late. I failed.

Jake's arms suddenly gave out, and he crashed to the ground. Pain lanced up his shoulder, but he ignored it.

Okay, it's official, he thought. I'm the worst Spartan ever.

Jake lay where he'd fallen, unable to move. He noticed a blackness starting to eat away at the corners of his vision. For a moment, he thought about simply letting into that blackness.

Then a new voice filtered through his mind.

_**Pathetic. Fucking pathetic, Hunter.**_

Huh? Who the hell...

_**Did you hear me? Pa-thet-ic! **_

The voice wasn't Hannah, that was for sure. This voice was male. Actually, it sounded a little like his own, but not exactly. It was...darker. Deeper. Almost emotionless.

Who-

_**Doesn't matter. Your friends are about to be eaten by a fucking vampire. Kill his sorry pale ass now, questions later!**_

Right, right. Gotta get up...Oh, right. I can't. Fuck.

_**That's because you're letting the pain have it's way with you. Don't. **_

Okay, fine. But I thought I was a Spartan. Why the hell-

_**You honestly think Spartan's can't feel pain? They do, they just know how to deal with it. Now shove that nausea and pain somewhere useless and get up! You've taken worse hits than this!**_

Got it...Jake tried to focus, but the pain seemed endless.

_**Think about something else other than it. **_

Something else, something else...

_**How about the fact that Topher's going to pretty much make out with the neck of the girl you like?**_

Jake thought about that, for all of one second. That was all it took.

The pain receded into the back of his mind. The world stopped spinning. New strength filled Jake's limbs, and he stood, shaking slightly, but not from pain or fear. Anger filled his chest; a single thought echoed in his mind.

No way in hell is some undead punk going to touch Karolina!

Something familiar returned as well; the Heat, stronger and hotter than the times he'd felt it before. Out of the bottoms of his eyes, Jake could have sworn he saw blue light coming from his hands. He dismissed it as nothing. He had more important things to focus on now;

Like ripping Topher limb for limb.

"Oi, Edward!" Jake called out. Topher stopped what he was doing, which Jake realized to his horror was removing Karolina's shirt, despite the girl's resistance, and turned to face him.

What the hell? I thought vampires bit the neck? Jake thought.

Neither Hannah nor the new voice answered him. He filed the question away for later investigation.

"Well, look who's not out of the count." Topher said calmly. If he was surprised that Jake was back on his feet, he didn't show it.

"Hands off the girls, fucker." Jake replied, with a growl. Topher smiled, showing off his rather impressive vampish teeth.

"So you _do_ have feelings for Karolina. Interesting." Topher scratched his chin. "I figured as much. But I think I'll disregard your offer."

"Back. Off." Jake growled, face turning into a snarl. He felt his hands clench. The Heat seemed to flow into them, heating the muscle and bone to almost painful levels.

"Make me." Topher replied, raising his right and, palm up, and curling his fingers towards himself. The universal "come at me" sign.

Jake could have cared less if Topher had been giving him both the American Finger and the British Finger at the same time. All that he did care about was the fact that Karolina was taking the time to crawl away from them, dragging Molly behind her. Thought he sort of wished she'd bothered to pull her shirt back down over her breasts before she started moving...

"Lets get it on, then." Jake said, cracking his neck. He took a cautious step forward, hands up in a fighting stance.

Apparently, Topher wasn't the most patient being on the planet. He barely waited three seconds before he went from defensive to offensive.

Exactly what Jake was hoping he would do.

The vampire's right fist came at Jake's face, almost too fast to track. But Jake was ready this time. With seconds to spare, he brought his own hand up, catching the blow straight in his palm. The sound of flesh on flesh echoed through the Hostel, and Jake felt something in his hand break. He ignored it, adding that pain to the nausea and broken nose of earlier.

For the first time in the fight, Topher looked shocked. Not fake shocked, but actual, honest-to-Master-Chief shock.

Jake smiled in response. He could see his reflection in Topher's eyes; the smile wasn't his normal one. It was...disturbing. Similar to the vampire's own, yet...not.

"What...are you?" Topher whispered. Jake laughed, the same cold, hard sound he'd made back at the Hayes's house.

"I...am a monument to all your sins." He hissed. Confusion filled Topher's gold eyes. He didn't get the reference. It didn't particularly surprise Jake. The vampire didn't seem to be the kind of 'person' to like Halo. Though he probably would have been good friends with the Flood Gravemind that Jake had taken the quote from.

But none of that was really important. It was important that Topher was of kilter. A confused opponent was a weak opponent.

A new noise reached Jake's ears; a sizzling noise, much like the sound of bacon cooking.

What the hell...

Jake glanced around, looking for the source. His eyes caught Topher's again. They were locked on their owner's hand, still held in place by Jake's palm.

Jake glanced over. Neither his hand nor Topher's had moved, and there didn't seem to be...

No, there was something differed. What looked like _steam_ coming from the place that they met.

Jake had less than a second to observe this before Topher howled and yanked his own hand free. The sound and steam dissipated, but Jake swore he could smell burning flesh. How he knew exactly what that smelled like, he wasn't sure.

Topher was looking at his hand in horror. Jake didn't take the time to check what was causing his reaction; he took advantage of Topher's moment of weakness and slung a punch of his own.

The blow caught Topher across the face, sending him spinning. The moment it connected, Jake felt himself enter Spartan Time.

The punch continued, and Topher took it, but slowed down several times. Jake had plenty of opportunity to watch the impact, Topher's flesh yielding under his own...and what was going on with his hand.

As it collided with Topher's face, Jake could easily see where the smoke and burning flesh smell had been coming from; his hand, for that matter his whole arm, seemed to glow blue. He could see the veins and arteries in it against the flesh, glowing as if something bioluminescent had replaced the blood within them.

As his transformed arm made contact with Topher's face, the blue glow seemed to spread to the boy. Something liquid looking, yet solid at the same time, spread across the vampire's skin, before dissipating into the air. In it's wake, it left dead, blackened skin, and the smell of burnt flesh...and a stink of ozone.

Ozone...realization hit Jake harder than Topher's fist.

Plasma. His arm had _plasma_ in it. It was like a biological Plasma Pistol. And, apparently, Topher's regenerative powers didn't cover it.

Now we're talking! He though. He felt a grin fill his face. Without hesitation, he swung another blow, this one more of a slap than an actual punch. But that was find with him. The intent for it wasn't to cause kinetic damage to Topher; it was to get as plasma onto the vampire's face as possible. In that respect, the blow worked spectacularly. The plasma spread across his skin in seconds, burning and blistering it.

Jake couldn't help but smirk even more.

_Better than Harry Potter on Voldemort!_ He thought, remembering what Molly had informed him had happened at the end of the first book in the series.

Unfortunately, his attack wasn't as effective as he had hoped, and it didn't hold Topher back for long. While Jake's guard was down, the vampire slowly reached his hands up and curled his fingers around his shirt and the top of his pants. Before he could react, Jake was hefted over his head and promptly thrown against a wall. His back connected to a column, causing both it and the column to crack loudly and painfully. The shock was enough that the breath was knocked out of him, sending saliva flying from his shock-opened mouth. Gravity took over then as he fell, jamming his shoulder against a large piece of loose rubble. He groaned in pain, rolling onto his back to cradle his shoulder for a moment, before he shoved its pain back into the same dark part of his mind he'd shoved the rest of it. Topher gazed down at him, reading to strike a fight-finishing blow.

Fortunately, Gert had his back... In a manner of speaking. Apparently, the girl had finally decided to join the fight.

"Old Lace, sic him!" She howled, pointing in the direction of Topher. The dinosaur obeyed her master and lunged at Topher with a internal-organ rattling roar.

Topher spun to face this new threat, and, upon seeing it was Lace, smiled.

"Oh really, that's the best you got?" He quipped sarcastically, some of his old confidence coming back now that he wasn't fighting Jake and his bizarre plasma-hands. Without hesitation, he charged straight at Old Lace and, at the very last moment, vaulted straight over the raptor's back like she was a pommel horse at a gym. Topher stuck a landing that would have given him at least a 9.5 at any gymnastic event, leaving Old Lace to stand in the place where he had just been, confused about where her prey had gone.

With a slight chuckle, Topher reached behind him, grabbed Lace by her large muscular tail, and swung her around like someone throwing a hammer, right into a wrecked table on the other side of the room.

Shit, was this prick a gymnast at some point? Jake found himself wondering.

Lace roared in pain and frustration, a cry echoed by Gert. Jake glanced over at the girl and saw her fall to the ground, clutching her head.

What the fuck...

Ironically, it was Topher who answered his question.

"Oh, so it's an _empathic_ connection, then." He muttered. "Interesting. Haven't seen that kind of human-animal control style in a good long while. Nice try, by the way."

The vampire smiled broadly, enjoying the results of what he assumed was a failed attack.

Unfortunately for him, while Gert's strike had failed as an actually frontal assault, it had worked perfectly as a distraction. While Topher had been dealing with Old Lace, Jake had regained his feet and readied himself to hit back.

Which he promptly did.

With a howl, Jake charged at Topher's unguarded back. The boy turned, realized it was Jake coming for him, and tried to run...

But didn't quite make it.

Jake launched himself into the air, muscles augmented with advanced artificial protein complex propelling him farther than any normal human would be able to jump. With grim determination, he grabbed onto the easiest part of Topher that he could reach; the vampire's neck.

Without hesitation, Jake closed his hands over Topher's windpipe and started squeezing. His victim made a high-pitched gasping noise that might have been a scream had Jake not been cutting off all air going into and out of his lungs. Twin clouds of smoke rose from under his grip as the plasma under his skin flowed out onto Topher's, burning and carbonizing every inch of flesh it touched. Topher struggled, but Jake put more of his weight behind his grip, holding the boy to the ground. He felt a sense of deja vu, like the ones he'd had earlier this night; at some point in his forgotten past, he'd done this to someone. Though _why_ he would ever have had to choke someone was beyond him.

Under him, Topher suddenly found purchase; with a grunt of triumph, he slammed both his feet into Jake's midriff.

Jake grunted as the wind was knocked out of him, then tried to scream as the force of Topher's blow send him flying in an arc away from the boy and towards the floor a meter or so from where Karolina had moved with the still-comatose Molly. As he soared up, he could see that Karolina was still there, watching the proceedings with a look of horror on her face and her arms around Molly. Which Jake would have thought of as sweet, had her entire right breast not been visible...

Any further thoughts on the subject were violently and brightly dispelled by Jake's sudden contact with the floor, which once more knocked the freshly-gained air out of his lungs. He lay where he landed, unable to move for the moment as his lungs attempted to suck in fresh air. On the other side of the room, Topher was making gasping noises and coughing. Jake glanced up as much as he could and saw the vampire stumble back and forth, clutching at his throat. Jake was pleased to see that every inch of visible skin between the boy's head and chest was black and dead, and in some cases actually flaking off in ash-like chunks.

"Fugh...youl muder fugher." Topher groaned. "Dan ack unker."

Jake assumed he was trying to say "Fuck you mother fucker" and "Damn ass fucker", but he wasn't entirely sure.

Instead, he took pleasure in the fact that Topher had been hurt enough that his speech was effected.

However, he was still on his feet. Something that needed to be rectified soon.

With a grunt, Jake attempted to heave himself to a sitting position, but found his arm refused to work. For that matter, he could barley feel them.

Fear filled Jake; Had that last toss broken something important?

No, he realized. He could still sort of feel his arms. They were just really weak. He thought about moving his right arm, and it shifted slightly. He tried again, and it moved more. He was alright; just stunned.

After a moment of thought, he let himself go limp again. If there was one thing he'd seen so far in this fight, it was that Topher obviously wasn't very good at planning for surprises...

Topher coughed and stopped staggering around. The vampire still looked like someone had splashed him with napalm (a rather accurate description), but he was looking better.

"You know, you're really a pain in my ass." He said. Apparently, his regenerate abilities included his voice box.

"Not surprising, considering how big of an ass you are," Jake fired back. It came out weaker than he'd hoped. Topher snorted.

"Hmm, haven't heard that one before." He noted, before smiling again. Jake found himself wondering, in the back of his mind, why the hell he smiled so much. "I'll have to remember that one." He coughed again, and Jake could have sworn he saw ash come out of his mouth. "Or maybe not. I can't really decided. Now, unless you've got any more tricks up your sleeve..." He paused, waiting for Jake to do something. Jake simply glared and waited for Topher to come closer.

"Guess not." Topher declared. "Where was I? Oh yes. You know, I _was_ actually going to make this quick for you and your friends. But, since you've gone out of your way to annoy me..." He paused, then shifted his attention to the right of Jake's position. "I think I'll let you watch me eat your friends first."

With a small chuckle, Topher strode across the rubble that littered the room towards the point that Jake had guessed held Karolina and Molly. He got half way there, then paused. Jake turned as much as he could without bringing attention to himself and noticed Topher staring in surprise at some spot beyond his field of vision.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me..." He muttered, clenching his hands into fist.

"Afraid not, asshole." Karolina's voice rang out from somewhere ahead of Topher. Jake, realizing that stealth probably wasn't necessary any more now that Topher was suitably distracted, swiveled around to get a line of sight onto whatever was going on.

What he was something that elevated his respect for Karolina quite a few notches. The alien girl was currently standing a meter or so from Topher, holding a large metal baseball bat that Jake recognized as the one he'd found stuck between two large chunks of ceiling a day and a half earlier, which he had ironically been looking for just before he started the power nap Molly had woken him from by riding Old Lace.

Staring at the bat, Jake had two questions enter his mind;

Where had Karolina found the fucking thing when he'd spent almost an hour trying to locate it, and why did he feel so good looking at her holding it? It certainly wasn't the tactical possibilities...

"Well, looks like I was wrong about you." Topher noted, attempting to sound calm and threatening and failing at both. Jake could hear something creeping into the vampire's voice, though he wasn't entirely sure. "I thought you were more of the ditsy cheerleader type. Looks like your more like Clair Bennett."

"Yeah, you were wrong on that count." Karolina replied coldly. The edge in her voice was sharp enough to cut titanium-A battle plate.

"Well, everyone's allowed one mess up, right? I mean-"

Whatever Topher meant, Jake never found out, as Karolina didn't give him the chance. With a surprisingly passionate battle cry, the girl surged forward towards the vampire and smashed him across the face.

The bat, driven by Karolina's fear and anger-fueled full-body swing, easily cut through Topher's fight-weakened flesh with and echoing _bonk_. The boy's lower face practically disintegrated into a cloud of flash-cooked skin, bone, and a large amount of dried blood that formed a black ashy cloud behind the bat like the tail of an evil comet. The momentum transferred into Topher himself, sending the vampire head over heels after his own blood. He crashed to the floor with a meaty _crunch_.

Karolina stumbled, regaining her balance, then looked over at Jake, who was climbing to his feet.

"Shit." He muttered, looking at Topher's still body. "Nice swing."

"Thanks." Karolina's voice was still hard. She gripped the bat tightly. Jake glanced around, taking in his surroundings and the current situation of his friends. Alex was still out cold, but Nico and Chase were slowly climbing to their feet, and Gert was off in a corner, stroking Old Lace and murmuring soothing words to her while rubbing the set of welts that Topher had left on the dinosaurs tail when he swung her into the wall. All in all, it was a lot better than Jake had hoped it was.

Something niggled at the back of Jakes mind.

"Wait, where's Molly?" He asked. He hadn't seen the mutant pre-teen anywhere.

"I moved her up stairs." Karolina motioned over her shoulder with the bat. "All the fighting woke her up. Took me a bit to get her to let go of my shirt, and she still has my bra, but she should be safe."

"Heh." Jake chuckled, imagining Molly clinging to Karolina's bra. When the girl eyed him curiously, he simply nodded and added "Good thinking."

Karolina nodded, satisfied. Sensing that the conversation was at an end, Jake turned to check on Topher...

Only to realized that, yet _again_, the vampire had slipped away when the group thought him down for the count.

Jake swore and slid into a fighting stance, arms up and ready to strike. Karolina, after noticing Topher's missing body, raised the bat again and pressed her self to Jake's back. Jake wasn't sure if it was because she had knowledge of combat or that she just felt safer with Jake at her back, or possibly a little of both. In actuality, he didn't particularly care. In that moment, he felt more confident about winning this fight than he had at all.

He turned to his right, scanning the area for any sign of Topher. Karolina turned with him, keeping six covered. Nothing moved. Silence filled the Hostel.

Then, without warning, Topher struck.

The vampire leaped from behind a column in a style that more closely resembled the bloodsuckers of TV and books than anything else he'd done today, arms forward in a grabbing gesture, mouth open. Or, as open as it could be with most of his lower jaw missing.

As Karolina was closest to him, she was the one he attacked, slamming into Jake as he did. Karolina saw the attack coming, but she moved to slowly to get out of the way. Instead, she reflexively raised her hands to block his strike.

What happened next, Jake wasn't entirely sure. Partially because it happened so quickly, and partially because he was in the wrong position to get a good look at it, his back being turned to the entire event. He did, however, manage to see Karolina and Topher collide, and the vampire apparently grab onto the girl's raised arm.

The moment he did, there was a brilliant flash, an ear-numbing _crack_, and Jake suddenly found himself flying across the room once again. This time, however, he managed to land on his feet in a crouch. He growled, rubbing his eyes until the spots vanished. When he could see again, he glanced up at the point in the room he had been blasted from.

It was empty, except for a large, smoking black patch in the center, where he had been standing a moment before. Three lines of black went off in opposite directions, one leading to a point six inches under Jake. At the end of one of the other two Jake could see Topher. Or rather, what remained of him. While the vampire was somehow still alive, whatever had caused the black patch on the ground and sent all three of the combatants flying had done some horrifying damage to Topher's body. Jake found himself comparing the boy's current complexion to a tennis ball dipped in gasoline and then lit on fire.

Feeling his stomach turn slightly, Jake's glance followed the final black scorch on the floor to it's origin; as he had suspected, Karolina. From where he was, he could see that she looked to be in much better shape than Topher, and was getting to her feet shakily.

Except for her right arm. Jake couldn't see it well at this distance, but it looked like a large section of Karolina's skin had lost all of it's color, standing out stark white against the rest of her California-sun tanned complexion. A mark that looked surprisingly like the palm of a hand and four fingers...

On a whim, Jake glanced back over to the right. Topher was still on the ground, clutching at his right hand and making a sort of gargling noise. Jake could easily see why; Most of Topher's right hand was completely burnt, possibly even more so than what Jake had done to him. As he watched, one of the boy's fingers fell off.

Topher glanced down at his appendage, then up at the still-recovering Karolina.

"Malgahineian." The vampire gargled out. "urg ahn bunkid malgahiniean."

In that moment, several seemingly unconnected bits of information came together in Jake's mind.

First, Karolina's contact with Topher had ignited the strange blast that had knocked Jake on his ass. Almost as if they were matter and anti-matter.

Second, Topher seemed weak to radiation of one kind or another, something in line with what Jake knew about vampires. He'd burned from Jake's plasma, and plasma was practically all radiation.

Third, Karolina's alien powers seemed to run off of sunlight. In other words, radiation in the ultra-violet wavelength.

And fourth, while the girl was currently running on empty, her inhabiter bracelet was off. All she needed was fuel.

In that moment, Jake suddenly realized he had a plan to finish Topher off.

With little time to waste before Topher regained his feet, Jake cast around the ruined floor in desperation. Debris chunks, blood spots, charred rug, one of Molly's random books...

There! His M6D II, laying atop a broken table. Still hurrying, Jake dove, rolled, and came up with pistol in hand.

Without hesitation, he pointed at Karolina.

"Cover your eyes, this is gonna be bright!" He shouted.

Not waiting to see if anyone followed his instructions, he flipped on the tactical light under the barrel to full power.

The effect was more brilliant than he hoped, in more ways than one. Karolina's strange alien biology took the taclights full spectrum beam (a feature installed, he remember, to let Spartans use the light as a improvised blinding weapon against any and all Covenant species) and used it as fuel for it's own mysterious purposes, essentially turning Karolina into the worlds largest flash grenade. The burst of rainbow light was so powerful that even Jake, who had prepared for it by looking away, was stunned. Every nook and cranny of the Hostel was illuminated, and Jake's shadow stretched to incredible lengths.

But it was worth it; before everything went white, Jake had a vision of Topher stumbling backwards and vainly trying to protect himself from the light. Then there was a loud _whumph_, and the vampire started screaming.

"Burn, you son of a bitch!" Jake yelled, keeping the light steady on Karolina. Three seconds after he said it, the light on his pistol died, its internal battery dead. Karolina, body deprived its source of radiation, dimmed back to normal.

But the light and the girl had done their jobs. Or, Jake thought it did. When he glanced over to where he'd seen Topher stumble, his heart sank; despite everything, the vampire was still alive. Despite the fact that his entire body looked like he'd been doused with napalm and (judging by the smoke that was coming out of every hole in him) he was apparently being burned from the inside out, he was still standing. Admittedly, he was screaming loud enough to make Jake's ears want to bleed, but he was still up.

Jake grit his teeth and raised his pistol. He was going to finish this, if it was the last thing he did. He hoped it wouldn't be...

Topher continued to stumble backwards from the center of the room, regaining some semblance of combat readiness. He stopped directly under the second-floor balcony, shook himself a bit, howled at Jake and his friends...

And had just enough time to look up and turn his howl into a scream before he disappeared beneath the end of a large red couch.

There was a _crash_, a burst of splintering couch parts, and then Topher was gone. The couch toppled over from it's position on its side onto it's legs, revealing a large pile of black ash.

"I _told_ him I'd drop a couch on him if he messed with us!" A voice bellowed from the balcony. Jake glanced up, guessing who was speaking. Sure enough, Molly stood there, arms triumphantly crossed over her chest and what Jake realized was Karolina's bra currently tied around her head like a bandanna.

Jake had never been so happy to see anyone in his entire life.

"Nice one!" He called, raising his fist in salute to Molly. The girl returned it, then vaulted off the balcony onto the couch she had crushed Topher with. She landed in a rather relaxed pose, arms across her chest and legs folded over each other, and held it. Jake found himself smiling, despite how tired he suddenly felt. Understandable, of course. Though the fight had been hard, he'd won. He and his friends were safe.

With the tiredness came the pain from his injuries, reappearing from whatever dark part of his mind he'd crammed them into. Questions came with it. Like, how the hell could he have plasma-hands? And what the fuck had that voice been-

_Jake, can you hear me? Come in, Hunter. Answer me, damn it! _Hannah's voice once again filled Jake's mind, cutting off his internal tirade.

Oh there you are! Jake thought angrily, eyes narrowing. Where the hell have you been! I could have used your help back there!

_Stuck in your cortex. Something blocked me from interfacing with you. _

Doesn't that figure... We're going to have to talk. I have a _lot_ of questions.

_I can tell. I can see a lot of random crap floating around in here. I don't have time to go over them right now. We'll talk later. _

Deal.

Satisfied that some of his confusion would be ironed out in the near future, Jake turned back to his friends.

They were okay...physically, anyway. Jake wasn't a psychologist, but he was pretty sure that the runaways wouldn't be forgetting this experience anytime soon.

"Is...is it over?" Nico called weakly from her place next to Alex, who Jake was glad to see was coming awake.

"Yeah, we're done here." Karolina agreed. Jake could hear the sharpness that had been in her voice drop away as she spoke, her words going from hard and strong to quiet and weak in seconds. The bat she'd been holding, even when Topher attacked her, dropped to the ground with a _clong_. Jake, an educated guess fueling his action, quickly moved to the side, preparing to catch her. In seconds, his plan proved to be correct; Karolina's legs gave out and she crashed into his arms, sending twin spikes of pain through Jake's bruised shoulders as they took her weight. For such a skinny girl, Karolina certainly wasn't light. Through his hands, Jake could feel her shake like she'd been hit with a taser. She glanced down at her own hands, watched them shake for a moment, then looked up at Jake, eyes full of confusion.

"Adrenaline letdown," He whispered, not entirely sure how he knew what was going on. "Your body's fight or flight system's spinning down."

Karolina nodded silently and gave him a weak smile. On impulse, Jake grabbed her hand in his and held it tightly. She returned it.

"Everyone okay?" Alex called out. Jake glanced over his shoulder to see him climb to his feet, helped by Nico. He was missing his glasses, and there was a rather nasty bruise forming on the underside of his chin, but other than that he seemed fine.

A chorus of affirmatives followed Alex's statement, though most of them were really nothing more than groans, and a "son of a bitch" from Chase.

Jake nodded to himself, impressed with the group. Fifteen minutes of having their asses kicked by a vampire, and no serious injuries.

Slowly, the group moved towards the center of the room, nursing their respective aches and pains.

"What the hell happened to Angel?" Chase asked, limping up to Jake's side. His hand was still on his chest, where Topher had kicked him.

"Molly dropped a couch on him." Gert explained, pointing at the large pile of ash that was once the group's enemy and the couch Molly was currently resting on.

"Huh. Wonder why Buffy never tried that?" Alex commented. "I mean, she used that rocket launcher on that one demon, but-"

"Who knows, who cares." Chase growled. "We almost got eaten by that fucker, and its _all...your...fault_." The boy emphasized his last three words with a fist shake at Alex.

"Hey!" Nico cried, jumping in to defend Alex. "Don't blame him! How the hell was he supposed to know that Topher was...whatever the fuck he was?"

"He still didn't have to bring him here!" Chase spat. "And if you hadn't been so damn happy to let him join us-"

"And why the hell were you so against that?" Nico shot back.

"Well I turned out to be right, didn't I?"

"Yeah, and what if you hadn't?"

"Then-"

"Look, can we fight later?" Gert moaned, clutching her head. "All this yelling's making my headache worse."

"Gert's right." Alex noted, obviously relieved to be off the subject of his apparently bad choice of recruitment. "We just got our asses kicked. The best thing for us to do right now is get some rest. We can figure out what the hell happened in the morning."

From Jake's arms, Karolina responded to the dark boy's suggestion with a snort.

"Rest? Sure," She muttered. "There's no way in hell I'm gonna sleep after this."

Jake found himself nodding in agreement. Though the truth was he actually felt dead on his feet, and would probably crash the moment he closed his eyes...

"We should still try." Said Alex, voice calm but still authoritative. Lacking any other ideas, the group shrugged collectively, mumbled agreements and shuffled off in a different directions.

Nico pulled Alex's hand into her, then lead him quickly up to the second floor. Chase glowered at them, raised both middle fingers in salute, glanced over at the pile of ash that had been Topher, and walked over to join Gert. He lay down next to her, both teens using Old Lace as an impromptu pillow.

Jake glanced up and realized he and Karolina were the only runaways still on their feet. Karolina shifted in his arms, and an awkward silence fell over the two of them.

"So..." Jake wondered. "Can I put you down now?"

"No, I'm fine." Karolina smiled brilliantly (if weakly) and crossed her arms behind her head. Jake chuckled.

"So, what? I'm your personal load-lifter now?" He said with a smile.

"Nah." Karolina wrapped her arms around Jake's neck. "More like my guardian angel."

"Guardian Spartan would fit better." Jake replied.

Karolina giggled and placed a quick kiss on Jake's lips. Jake's face heated.

"Uh..." He muttered. "Um...I think I might sleep down here tonight. I don't really feel like climbing the stairs."

Especially if I have to carry you, he thought to himself.

"Then don't." Karolina said happily. She blinked and her face fell. "I...hope you don't mind if I join you," She added, sounding a little shaky.

"Oh no, there's no way in hell I'm going to let a possibly wounded and obviously freaked out hot chick who's kissed me three times in the last week sleep anywhere near me," Jake said jokingly. "Go hide somewhere else."

"Shut up." Karolina scoffed. She punched Jake's shoulder. Jake simply grinned and stood. After stretching till his back cracked like a sniper rifle firing, he carried Karolina over to the couch Molly was currently sitting on. The girl, who had rolled over during Chase and Nico's argument, was currently poking at the pile of ash that had been Topher. Ironically, she seemed the calmest of the whole group. She pulled her hand out of Topher's remains and held something up to the light; the vampire's eye brow ring. She looked it over, then slid it onto her ring finger and nodded in satisfaction.

"Might want to get that disinfected first," Jake noted as he neared. Molly jumped up, slightly surprised, but relaxed when she realized who had spoke.

"Nah, I think it's cool." She said, admiring the trinket. She glanced back at Jake, apparently noticing he was carrying Karolina. She giggled at the site.

"Where are _you_ two going?" She asked, voice laced with more giggles.

"Somewhere." Karolina answered, shifting to look at her.

"Gonna have some _fun_?" Molly probed.

"No." Both Karolina and Jake responded at the same time, voices indignant. Molly made an "aw" noise, scowled, and sunk deeper into the cushions of the couch she was on. She unfolded herself just as quickly.

"Well, if your not going to go do...stuff," she said, absentmindedly playing with one of the pom-poms on her hat. "You could sleep down here, with me."

Jake caught the subtext in Molly's offer. So she wasn't as unafraid as he'd expected. He didn't mind. If anything he found her subtle plea cute.

"We'd love to, Molly." Karolina answered before Jake could. "Right?" She directed the last question at Jake, making it very clear that he should say agree.

Not wanting to break whatever had formed between him and Karolina in the last few minutes (though honestly he would have agreed without her influence), Jake simply nodded. Molly clapped gleefully and scooted to the side of the couch to open up some room. With a grunt, Jake gently dropped Karolina lengthwise onto the cushions, then stretched and slumped to the ground, back up against the front of the couch. He retrieved his pistol, ejected the magazine, and reloaded it with a fresh one from inside his jacket. He placed it next to his right leg, safety off.

"What the hell are you doing on the floor?" Karolina asked, leaning over the edge of the couch. "We've got plenty of room up here."

"Yeah!" Molly joined in. "It's all lonely and stuff up here."

"Better tactical position." Jake answered calmly. "I want to be ready for anything."

He glanced over at the pile of ash that Molly had been stirring earlier. "Anything."

"Oh." The alien girl replied. "Well, if you get tired of sitting on the floor..." She patted the cushion next to her, the middle of of the couch's three.

"Sure." Jake replied, smiling. Then he turned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and closed his eyes.

Not like it's going to do much, he thought. I really doubt I'm going to just-

Before he could finish his thought, he was out cold.

**A/N: Well, there we go. How's THAT for a remix, huh? Told you guys it wouldn't take two years.**

**But really, this isn't the end of this arc, not just yet. I'm gonna write one more short chapter as an epilogue, then it's on to the next one. For those of you who enjoyed how I mixed up the fight with Topher, theres going to be a LOT more remixing in the next arc. **

**Additionally: I have received a couple private messages wondering about Jake's dreams. For those of you who are wondering;**

**Yes, they will be explained in more detail. Probably in the next chapter. Part of the reason I'm writing it.**

**No, they aren't just there so I don't have to write more of the actual story. They will eventually form their own little plot line, which will fill in some of Jake's back story.**

**Lastly, I want to thank Ryuu-Kitsune-Onna1, for helping me out with this chapter and providing someone to bounce ideas off of. Even the really stupid ones. Without your help, this probably would have taken two years to finish, just like the last one. **

**Well, thats all I really have to say. See you all next chapter!**


	5. Issue 5, or The Real Teenage Wasteland

Runaways Remix: Teenage Wasteland

Issue 5

The Mind of Jacob Hunter

The Main Room of "The Hostel"

Bronson Canyon, California

Time Unknown

Though he had hoped to sleep peacefully, Jake's mind was as restless as it had been the last three times he'd closed his eyes.

This time, he was at least somewhere nice for once. Not flying whales or rusting skyscrapers or anything crazy like that. Now, he was just in a field of grass. It was very thick grass, he noticed. Well nourished by rain and good soil. A couple meters from him were several massive evergreen trees. The air was filled with their scent, and a glance up revealed he was leaning back against one of them. Beyond the other trees was the glittering blue of a large body of water, which Jake realized was probably the Pacific Ocean judging by the presence of pine trees. He was obviously in the Pacific Northwest, though where exactly he didn't know.

He breathed deeply, feeling amazingly good. Even the tell-tale clouds on the horizon that heralded the certainty of rain didn't trouble him.

Jake sighed, stretched his arms, and glanced at the watch attached to his wrist. 16:05, it read. 4:05 in the afternoon.

Jake stood up with a grunt, dusted off his clothes to remove the light accumulation of pine needles that had fallen on him while he rested under the tree, and pulled a small radio from his shirt pocket.

"This is Hunter." He said into it. "All teams, sound off."

A moment of silence punctuated by static emanated from the radio's speaker. It cut off abruptly as someone spoke into the channel.

"This is Alpha Actual," a male voice he didn't recognize spoke first. "We're ready to start the ownage when you are, sir."

A pause, then another speaker.

"Beta Actual reporting". A female voice this time, which he did know; Deryn, the cross-dressing midshipman from the living airship. How she was here, wherever this was, didn't bother him in the least. "We're ready to provide covering fire when you need us. Or we will be, if Alek can get this barking tin can moving when you need it."

A third voice cut Deryn off as she drew breath to say something else.

"Uh, Omega Actual here, sir." Another male voice. Jake knew this one too. He'd heard it in his dream from earlier that night, the one with the red airship and the moving city.

He felt the urge to answer this one himself.

"Go ahead Natsworthy." He said into the radio. "You on station?"

"Yes. The _Jenny_'s ready for pick up when you call for us."

"Good. All teams, stand by to commence on my mark. Get tactical, people." He turned the radio off and stuffed it back into his pocket. Then, with another stretch, he started trudging further inland. He would have call it walking, but the grass was so thick it was like stepping on a sponge. Jake didn't particularly mind. It felt good, and honestly having every step he took be a sort of bounce on the ground was fun.

Quickly, Jake found his destination. A dry stream bed cut through the rich earth, flanked on both sides by trees. With a grunt, Jake jumped off the edge and crashed to the damp earth below like he wanted to crush it under his weight, knees bent to absorb the shock and arms thrown out behind him for balance. He straightened, dusted himself off again, and glanced down at the other end of the stream bed.

Several meters inland from where he stood, three teens waited. Two were crouched around the third, who was lying prone behind a large pair of binoculars, which were pointed at what was undoubtedly their target; a small city, half-hidden in trees and lacking anything even resembling a skyline.

Hearing Jake land (part of the reason he'd been so loud) they turned around and acknowledged him.

Jake looked them over, checking their state of readiness.

The one on the left of the prone teen was a boy, who looked somewhat similar to Jake himself. Same blond hair, blue eyes, and wiry build. He was a full head shorter than Jake was, however.

He was also armed to the teeth. Strapped to most of the plates of ceramic armor that covered his clothes and the tops of his shoes were long belts of huge bullets. Undoubtedly, they were meant to be loaded into the large machine gun laying on the ground near him.

In addition to the bullet belts, he also carried a dozen grenades, twin M6D pistols with laser sights and extended magazines, a flare gun, and some large device that resembled a gun but obviously wasn't. And if those weren't enough, a large three-barreled rocket launcher was slung across his back.

The team member to the opposite side of the binocular user couldn't have been more different. Aside from being a girl (though her hair and eyes were similar to the boys, but not enough that they could be related), she wasn't armed or armored conventionally. Instead of the guns and grenades of her fellow soldier, her only weapon was the longest chainsaw Jake had ever seen, the blade of which was at least two feet long. Replacing armor was the kind of clothing you'd see a standard high school student wearing, with the exception of her hands, which were covered by a pair of full-size white cotton gloves with some kind of circular emblem inscribed on their backs.

Jake figured she didn't really need firepower when he noticed what was sitting next to her. Curled like a giant, reptilian cat was a dinosaur. A velocoraptor, from the looks of it, one that looked quite similar to Old Lace. It opened a huge eye, glanced at Jake, then closed it again.

"Hey, our fearless leader has returned." The girl noted without turning around.

"Glad to see you too, Jas." Jake said, a smile pulling at his lips. "I don't remember you having a fabricated dinosaur before."

"Yeah. HunTech was nice enough to let me beta test this one for them. Some time travelers want it for their kid, I think. Something like that."

"Ah." Jake nodded. "Lucky you. You got a name for it yet?"

"Yeah. Old Lace."

"Old Lace?" the armed boy asked, surprised. Jake realized this was the boy who had been talking to him over the radio. "Kinda funny naming for a dinosaur, wouldn't you think?"

"It's a reference to possibly the best B&W film I've ever seen." Jas replied. "And it's better than Oscar Lima 155, or whatever they called her, right?"

"Eh..." The boy made an indecisive noise.

"Well, she seems to like it." Jas noted, scratching the dino with her fingers. "Might mention that to whoever ordered her. Get their kid mentally implanted with it. Or something like that."

"Good luck with that, you know how they are about changes of plans-" the boy muttered.

"Still, you're lucky to have it." Jake added, cutting off what he knew would grow into an argument.

"Well it was your connections with the company that got me it." Jas shrugged as she finished.

"Yeah. Go Team Jake." The boy added, pumping his fist unenthusiastically. "Now are we going to kill these undead mother fuckers or no?"

"Soon, Chris." Jake soothed. "Remember the plan."

"I remember," Chris grumbled. "I just don't like waiting."

"You've never been one for waiting, its true." The third and final member of the group, the one using the binoculars, finally joined the conversation.

Jake knew this girl all to well. Though it should be impossible, she was here; Clementine Jones herself.

He glanced over again, just to be sure he was right. He was; it really was Clem, alive and well and apparently ready to fight, judging by the ODST battle dress uniform she was wearing, minus the helmet.

"Got that right, Clem." Jake said, feeling a smile play across his lips. "But we won't have to wait for much longer."

He glanced at his watch again. 16:09 and thirty seconds. 30 seconds till the start of their mission.

"All teams, be ready to commence on my mark." He ordered into his radio. He glanced at the group around him. They too were following his order. Chris slid a belt of ammo into his machine gun, then yanked the charging handle, loading a round into its chamber. Jas cracked her fingers and wiggled one, calling Old Lace to her side. Clem clambered to a kneeling position and pocketed her binoculars. Jake glanced down at his watch again.

"Three...two...one...Mark!" Jake called out over the radio.

There was a moment of silence, as if the whole world was drawing a breath.

Then everything exploded.

At least, that's what it felt like to Jake. He knew it was really nothing more than Beta Team beginning the distraction they'd been assigned, the large kerosene-powered walking tank they were riding in firing it's twin 75mm cannons blindly into the city below it.

The high-explosive rounds fell to earth, spewing flame through the once-calm streets of the city.

"That's our cue!" Jake barked, waving his hand forward dramatically. The gesture wasn't really needed, but it felt good to do it.

"Hell yeah!" Chris agreed, hauling his gun up like it weighed nothing. "Lead the way, boss! We got your back!"

Jake nodded in approval and thanks, then vaulted the bank of earth in front of him and slid down the small hill it created. As he slid, he pulled his own weapon off his back. It was an assault rifle, but not one he was familiar with. It wasn't an MA series. The magazine was placed in front of the trigger and grip, meaning it wasn't a bullpup rifle like the MA. It lacked a stock, and the magazine itself was little more than a box held in place by a latch.

But it was obviously nasty; in addition to the big barrel, which indicated a large caliber of ammunition, the underslung attachment point was filled with a chainsaw. An honest-to-Master-Chief _chainsaw_.

It was this that Jake activated, the saw's roar almost drowned out by the constant, steady _boom_ of cannon shells landing everywhere and the irregular secondary blasts of things in the town exploding under the walker's fire.

Jake slid to a stop in front of a boarded up door, which he took the chainsaw to. The wood splintered easily, sending slivers everywhere but opening the passage into the building. Before he entered, he glanced up at the name above the door.

_Sheriff's__Office,__Forks,__Washington_, it read.

So that's where he was. Forks.

His team filed in behind him, having followed him down the hill; first Clem, then Chris, and finally Jas, with Old Lace close behind.

Jake glanced around, making sure the area was clear. It was. He turned back to his team, who had formed up behind him in the darkened office.

"Alright, split up." He ordered. "Chris, Jas, take the back way and secure the objective. Clem, you're with me. We're going to cut right through the heart of these undead freaks and draw them away from Chris's group."

"Sounds fun." Clem noted, retrieving her own weapon. Jake recognized it as a BR55 Battle Rifle. A modified one, if the extended clip, lengthened barrel, and more powerful scope were any indication.

"Don't worry, sir. We'll get the job done." Jas assured Jake, hefting her chainsaw to make a point.

"Hell yeah. Just keep those bastards distracted and the LZ clear. We'll do the rest." Chris added. Jake bumped fists with Chris, and the boy split off, followed by Jas and Old Lace, climbing out the window behind them. Jake turned to Clem, who was flipping the safety of her BR55 off.

"So..." he said, voice low and husky. "Same deal as normal?"

"Who ever kills the most tangos gets top?" Clem pulled something on the side of her rifle and it made a loud _click_. "You know it."

"Better find that ottoman foot-rest thing then." Jake smirked, adjusting his grip on his rifle. "You know how I like having you over it."

"And you'd better find some extra pillows." Clem retorted. "I got something new I want to try out."

Jake laughed darkly and revved his chainsaw again.

"You'll have to lace more people than me first!" He cried.

He hurried to a window and glanced out of it. Off in the distance, he could see where he needed to go; a large statue of a lumberjack felling a tree, right in the center of town. The pre-arranged distraction point.

There was a lot of ground to cover between there and where he was. And he had a feeling it wasn't going to just be a quick, clean walk.

"Let's sprint this." Clem noted, indicating the statue. Jake nodded, agreeing. "Sprint this" meant running from a start point to an end point, not stopping for anything or anyone. The perfect tactic for this situation.

"See you there!" Jake taunted happily.

With that, he ran to the door on the other side of the room and kicked it right where the lock met the frame. The wood splintered, and the door swung freely on its hinges. Jake charged out into the street, rifle swinging in his arms.

Outside, it was chaos. In addition to the havoc caused by Deryn and Alek's walker fire, which was still coming down hard, there seemed to be a small war going on in the town. As Jake ran through, Clem at his heels, he caught snatches of it.

There seemed to be two sides. What looked like normal people, everyday citizens you'd see in any small town or city out in the middle of nowhere. And the other group...well, they _usually_ looked normal. But every time one stepping into a beam of sunlight (the very few there were through the overcast sky) there would be a brilliant flash and they would start to...sparkle.

This didn't faze Jake at all. Instead, he fired up his chainsaw again and sprinted harder. He could hear Clem just behind him, panting as she ran, the noises of her breathing intermixed with the _crack_ of her rifle.

Something fell in Jake's path; one of the glowing people, arms flailing comically. Jake swung his rifle, and the teeth of the saw caught the unfortunate person in the chest. A plume of black liquid erupted from the contact point, a small amount splashing onto Jake's shirt. Jake shoved down and pulled back on the rifle, forcing his victim to the ground and removing the saw from his body. He kept running. Two more sparkling freaks started to cross his path, but Clem got them first and both their heads exploded in clouds of black. Jake elbowed his way through them without a second thought.

As he ran, he could see the battle wasn't as simple as it looked. One of the seemingly normal people came at him, and in mid-air he seemed to change. What landed was the largest wolf Jake had ever seen. Size, or it's origin, didn't mean anything to Jake, however. Instead, he simply leveled his rifle at the wolf and pulled the trigger. Rounds tore into the creature, sending it sprawling and twitching to the ground. Jake promptly stepped on in, using its massive body as a spring board to get airborne and cover more distance.

Seconds later, his boots touched ground and he was running again. Right behind him, Clem's rifle fired and another of the wolf-things crashed into his path, leaking blood from a clean hole in its chest.

Jake recoiled and raised his rifle again. The saw bit into the wolf, and his forward momentum sent it down and in. Meat and bone gave way under its sharp teeth, and in seconds Jake had literally cut the wolf in half. The two parts fell to the side and Jake moved on.

"Watch your fire!" He called back to Clem, more taunting than angry. "That one nearly tripped me!"

"Then watch where you're walking!" Clem shot back, before promptly shooting one of the sparkling freaks to the left of Jake.

Jake grinned and sped up. He was close to his destination now. He could see the statue, huge and imposing against the darkening sky. Or at least, what remained of it. Most of the top had recently been removed by a walker shell. Jake could see where it had landed, off to the right. Judging by the black smear under it, one of the sparkling fighters had been unlucky enough to be under it when it hit.

A buzzing noise filled the air. Jake glanced up. Above him, an airship hung over the town center like a malicious red cloud. On its gondola Jake could see the name _Jenny__Haniver_.

Their escape ship, piloted by Tom Nastworthy. Probably being used by Beta Team as an artillery spotter to direct their fire.

As if drawn by his thoughts, another shell soared in towards him like a pass thrown by a quarterback. Jake had enough time to see the green paint on its side and throw himself to the ground before it burst apart with a dull _pop_. A soft whistling noise filled the air, and when Jake glanced up from the ground he saw sparklers and wolfs falling in all directions. One too close to the statue was forced against it and stuck there, impaled by the dozens of tiny metal spikes Jake knew came out of the green-painted rounds.

He rose from the ground and pulled his radio out.

"Beta Team, Alpha One! Watch your fire! We're at the statue and that last beehive shot nearly got us!"

"Roger that. Apologies, sir. We're adjusting our fire." A male voice replied this time instead of Deryn. Alek, Deryn's Austrian boyfriend, judging by his accent.

"Yeah, you better be sorry, Clanker." Jake growled, turning the radio back off.

There was a _thud_ behind him as Clementine joined his position. Jake eyed her, making sure she wasn't hurt. She wasn't. She looked normal, except for the brilliant blush in her cheeks which showed off her freckles, the evil glint in her green eyes, and the free hand she was currently shoving down the front of her armored pants.

"I've got five," she said, meaning dead enemies. "What about you?"

"Four-" Jake started to speak, but stopped as another of the sparklers came around the corner. He fired his rifle one-handed and the freak went down, minus an arm and most of its head. "Make that five."

"Huh." Clem said, grinning. She raised her own rifle and cut down one of the wolfs in mid-change. The corpse, half-man, half-wolf, crashed to the ground and knocked over a sparkler, which Jake quickly finished of with a long-range headshot.

"Six and six." Jake noted calmly. Clem scoffed and quickly blew away a sparkler who was running to join the fight.

Jake matched her again, dropping the sparkler's buddy, but as his victim fell he noticed that the battle was escalating. More of the sparklers were coming out of practically every building, and Jake could hear the sounds of more wolfs approaching from behind and to the sides of him, dog-like breathing mixed with bone-chilling howls.

Jake's radio crackled. He snatched it up and clicked it on.

"Alpha One here! Go ahead!" He shouted, blind firing his rifle at another sparkler who had gotten too close.

"Two here, boss." Chris's voice came through. "We're on the third floor of the target building. Looks like you got ten buttloads of tangos inbound to your position."

"No shit!" Jake howled back. "Do you have the package?"

"Jas's working on getting it." Chris replied. In the background, barley audible over the static of the connection, Jake swore he heard the sound of something screaming. "But it looks like half the fucking Cullen clan's here. They must _really_ want to protect this Bella chick. Jas's having to take it slow to avoid collateral. She hasn't really mastered Mustang's gloves yet, and that dino's only good for taking out one of these freaks at a time. Hey, you _do_ want Miss Swann in one piece, right?"

"What do you think?" Jake asked angrily. "What about that chainsaw of hers?"

"Grell's death scythe? Yeah, it's too big for this. She got the damn thing stuck in a wall the moment we walked through the door."

"Fine. Just get the package and get it to the LZ." Jake cringed as a dead wolf slammed to the ground near him. "I'd rather not be here for much longer."

"Copy that. Hey, I've got a clean view from here," Chris noted. "Give me the word and I'll cook these sons a bitches."

Jake paused, and glanced at the area around him. The fighting was getting worse, and more dead wolfs and sparklers were falling around him, one close enough to spray black goo over his shoes.

"Do it!" He howled into the radio.

"Roger that. Dropping the Hammer of ODIN in three..."

Jake cut off the radio the moment he heard what Chris said. Quickly, he grabbed Clem by her arm (causing her to gasp and almost drop her rifle) and pulled her behind the statue, into the shady place produced by its pedestal.

"What the hell, Hunter?" She yelled. "This isn't the time to make out!"

"Chris's dropping the Hammer!" Jake shouted back.

Clem's face drained of color.

"Shit, we gotta-"

The rest of her sentence was lost to Jake. In that moment, the sky seemed to split open.

A roaring, shrieking column of pure energy burst from above and impacted the ground four yards from where the statue was.

The instant it did, everything in that area died.

Any wolfs and sparklers within a yard of ground zero instantly vaporized, turned into shadows on the ground. Anything beyond that simply caught fire, or was carbonized into a dusty statue. Windows melted or exploded into shards from the force of the blast. Roofs ignited as their shingles caught fire. Wooden buildings evaporated into clouds of debris. Anything metal liquefied, sending streams of glowing slag into the street. The street itself cracked and burned, then heaved as a gas main under it exploded. Every ounce of water within a fifty yard radius flashed from liquid to gas, filling the whole area with a scalding steam.

Jake and Clem huddled behind the statue's pedestal, protected from the lance of death by the thick local rock of its construction. The waves of fire currently burning the town swept around the base of the statue like water around a boulder, sucking most of the air out of their hiding point and making it amazing cold. The statue above itself melted under the intense heat, providing them a strangely wondrous view of metal rivulets soaring through the air over them.

Over the radio, Jake faintly heard Chris calling out in joy at the destruction he'd caused and Jas mentioning that the package was secure and they were calling for exfil. Unaffected by the lance of light, the _Jenny__Haniver_ floated serenely over to the designated landing zone.

Despite the situation, and how close they were to the possibility of death and the waves of fire roaring around them, Jake found himself pulling Clem to him. He could see his own reflection in her eyes, lit by the fire of death that wrapped around their shelter.

"Now's the time to make out." He said softly, cupping her chin.

And he promptly did just that.

The moment his lips touched Clem's, a sudden darkness swallowed Jake. It was like someone threw a switch and the sun went out.

He could feel that he wasn't in the center of Forks any more. The feelings of the statue, the fire, and, most depressingly, Clem's body were gone. All Jake could feel now was a sort of cold vacuum.

He wasn't blind, though. He could see himself. But everything else was a blank void of black.

Then there was a sudden rushing, liquid noise, like a river. Jake spun, looking for the source. But there was just the void. Nothing moved, nothing that could be causing the rushing noise.

Something joined the rushing. At first, Jake thought it was part of it. Slowly, though, it became clear it was something else. A rhythmic, throaty beat. A chuckle.

From the blackness all around him came a voice. One very familiar, but without something to place it with.

_At__last,_ it said, sending shivers up Jake's back. _Back__on__the__front__again.__Its__been__too__damn__long._

"Who are you?" Jake shouted into the dark.

The voice chuckled again.

_You__already__know__me__quite__well_, it said.

Before Jake had time to ponder this, he felt something warm and wet swirl around his feet. He glanced down.

He was ankle-deep in some red liquid, which had seemingly come out of nowhere. At first, he thought it was Kool-Aid or something similar. But it was too thick, and far too sticky. Intrigued, he stuck his finger in and tasted it. Coppery.

Revulsion hit him like a brick in the gut; he was standing in _blood_.

And it was getting higher.

He hadn't noticed it earlier, but now, as he watched, he could see the pool of blood was slowly rising, coloring parts of his pant that had until then been dry. Jake took a step backward in horror, which only caused him to loose his balance and fall backwards into the rising red tide.

He stopped his fall with his hands, but his fall seemed to open some unseen floodgate. As he rose to his feet, he was splashed in the chest by a wave of blood. He fell again, but never hit bottom. Before he could, another surge lifted him, sending his body spinning around like a bottle in rough surf.

The ocean analogy quickly proved even more apt as Jake felt his feet leave bottom. He was floating, out of control and soaked to the skin in blood.

He struggled, and a coppery wave splashed over his head. When he forced himself back up, sputtering and gagging, he could hear the voice laughing.

He opened his mouth to shout something at it, but another bloody wave slammed into him, forcing him deep into the red depths. He struggled, trying to swim up, but the blood seemed to be pulling him down. Still he fought, gaining inches through sheer will and fear.

Just as his fingers broke the surface, there was an all-mighty pull from below, like someone pulling the plug out of a tub, and Jake was sucked back down again.

He let out a scream, a long line of glistening bubbles rising up as he was dragged into the darkness.

Jake jerked awake with a gasp worthy of any bad TV show. But in this case, it wasn't just drama that made him do it. He could still feel the blood of his dream coating him, the sticky, coppery taste still in his mouth. He gagged, but there wasn't anything actually there. He pushed himself up against the couch and took a couple deep breaths, clearing his head.

A sudden cold feeling seized him, and his whole body started to shake.

Adrenaline letdown, he thought. The same thing that had dropped Karolina before he went to bed. Or something similar.

But this one was a lot worse than what the alien girl had gone through. Jake's was brutal compared to it. He felt like his muscles were trying to shake themselves off his bones. His throat clenched tight, making it hard to breath. It felt like there was a hole in his chest, sucking everything around it in. His eyes burned, and he felt tears force their way down the sides of his face. He crossed his arms over his chest, trying to force some heat back into his body. It didn't do much good, and if anything made the sudden sucking feeling in his chest worse.

Something warm pressed against his cheek, sliding through the lines of dampness left by his tears and sending tingles up the nerves in his face. He inhaled sharply, jerking up straighter.

"Bad dream?" Karolina's voice drifted softly from the couch. The warm spot on his cheek moved, trailing down rest on his neck. Jake reached up and placed his hand on the spot, feeling long, nimble fingers under his palm. Karolina's hand.

"Yeah. Fucking nightmare." He replied hoarsely. His throat was still tight.

"Must have been. You were making funny noises." Karolina noted. "Your skin's ice cold. Are you feeling okay?"

"I'll live." Jake replied automatically. Without meaning to, he slipped his hand into Karolina's. Heat spread through his hand, sending sparks up his arm as feeling returned to his fingers.

"Probably isn't helping that you're on the floor." Karolina's voice was soft and kind, soothing to Jake's rattled nerves. "Why don't you come up here?"

Jake paused and considered his options. Which consisted of either staying on the cold, hard floor and suffer until whatever had seized him let go, or climbing onto the couch and maybe sharing some of Karolina's apparently abundant warmth and obvious concern for him.

"Yeah, I'm coming up." Jake said, rising from the ground with a groan and a shudder. He practically collapsed onto the couch, which was thankfully now only occupied by Karolina. Molly had, at some point, rolled off the couch onto the floor and was now, Jake noticed, under it, snoring softly.

Jake let out a sigh as he sank into the cushions of the couch. After laying on the floor for so long, it felt like settling into a cloud.

He felt something warm encircle his midriff and pull him down sideways, so that he ended up with his head practically in Karolina's lap. An accident that he was, in all honesty, quite fine with. He sighed, inhaling the scent of her pajama bottoms happily. She smelled like sunlight. If that was even possible.

Jake watched out of the corner of his eye as Karolina looked down at him, a look of concern on her face.

"Are you sure you're okay?" She probed. "You look like you've-"

"If you say 'seen a ghost', I'm going upstairs." Jake cut in. But there was no real force behind the threat. Now that he was here, on the couch and more specifically Karolina's warm lap, he wasn't really sure if he wanted to get up under his own power. Ever.

"Well, you look shaken." Karolina replied, a weak smile playing on her lips. She absentmindedly stroked Jake's forehead, leaving lines of warmth on his still-sweaty skin. "That must really have been one hell of a nightmare." She paused, then looked down at something on the floor next to her. Jake was pretty sure it was the pile of ash that used to be Topher. "Though after what just happened..."

"Funny, but it actually had nothing to do with that." Jake felt the sentence leave his mouth without intending it too. Well, it wasn't like he had anything else better to do than elaborated...

"You remember Clementine Jones, right?" He asked. Karolina jerked slightly, then nodded.

"Yeah. We had a couple classes together, and she helped run the Gay-Straight Alliance. And I was at the hospital with my parents when-"

She stopped, looking guilty.

"Oh, jeez. You're nightmare...was it the accident?"

"Nah, I'm over that." Jake laughed, guiltily. Because he wasn't, not really; even now, he could still remember that horrible antiseptic and rotting flesh smell, the ambulance gurney under his back, the dull hospital lights, Mr. and Mrs. Jones sobbing and then cursing, the body-numbing shock. Sneaking through the dead halls, so drugged up on morphine he was seeing things but determined to make sure Clem's remains got the proper treatment, not whatever Christian bull-shit her parents wanted. The weeks of fake compassion from people he didn't know or hated that would have made Clem go crazy...

He snapped back with a shiver.

"Well, I dreamed about it earlier." He continued, hoping Karolina had missed his zone out. "Before our fight with Edward. But I'm over that, like I said. This last dream...well, it wasn't really a dream."

"It was one of those memory things you told me about earlier?" The alien girl asked quietly. "And...Clem was in it?"

"Yeah, that's the long and skinny of it." Jake couldn't help but be slightly impressed by the girl's quick thinking. A dumb blond she certainly wasn't, as if he'd ever doubted it in the first place. Something he didn't mind one bit.

"You could be wrong." She suggested, looking thoughtfully off into the broken ceiling above them. "Maybe it actually _was_ a dream, but it just seemed like one of your memories. I mean, that's what dreams are. Our brain attempting to file away memories and random thoughts. According to Molly's dad, anyway."

"And you trust the word of an evil mutant?" Jake asked sarcastically. He couldn't help himself. Karolina scowled down at him, but there was no menace in it.

"It's not just him. I heard the same thing in my Beginning Psychology class."

"Huh." Jake grunted, but nodded. He liked that suggestion. It certainly was easier to think about than the other possibility, which was...what? That Clem was somehow related to his lost past? That he's actually killed vampires and werewolves in Forks alongside her?

He shook himself mentally. The idea was too weird to even think about.

"Makes sense." He said finally. "I have been thinking about her a lot this week. I thought Nico was her, for a moment, back at that meeting where this all started. He clothes, you know. And then when we were coming back from the Circle A you guys talking with Topher sparked something, and now this..." He shrugged and sighed.

"So, how are you holding up?" He asked. Karolina made a grunt equivalent to "no comment".

"Alright, all things considered." She looked over Jake again, this time in the opposite direction. Jake shifted his head to follow her gaze and guessed she was looking at Alex and Nico, who were curled up in an almost-sexual way ("spooning", Jake remembered randomly, though he had no idea where the word had come from).

"I'd be more worried about them, really. Especially Alex." He face turned soft as she glanced over the bespectacled boy. "You know how he is. He'll be beating himself up for days for this."

Jake noticed her eyes get hard, and suspected she was about to start berating herself for following the boy in his line of thought and not seeing Topher for what he was faster. He reached up and grasped her shoulder firmly.

"Don't you start beating yourself up either." He ordered. "That bitch tricked us, and we kicked his ass in return. That's a win for us, right?"

"Yeah." Karolina didn't sound so sure. She absentmindedly started rubbing Jake's chest. "I guess."

She paused again, leaning her head back into the couch to look at the ceiling. Her hand continued to rub Jake's chest as she did. "So, what about us?" She asked.

"What about us?" Jake asked back, feeling a little confused again. He had a semi-solid idea of what she meant, but he wanted to make dead sure of it.

"What are we now? I mean, all this kissing, and the fighting...are we a couple? Or what? I mean, not that I don't want to be if you want to be but-"

Jake sat suddenly upright, cutting Karolina off. He softly kissed her again, silencing her protests once more against his lips.

"Shhh." He said, pulling back and replacing his lips with his finger. "Don't think about it to hard. How bout we let this wait till tomorrow, okay?"

The words spilled out of him like he'd said them before. But to who, and on what, he didn't know, and he was too tired to try and find out. He let the deja vu slip away, focusing instead on the dreamy look in Karolina's eyes.

"Okay." She smiled around Jake's finger, then sat back into the cushions of the couch. "Actually, I think I might just try-"

She interrupted herself with a massive yawn, one of the ones that left your mouth aching for seconds after. Jake just smiled and lay back down.

Karolina sighed, and then went quiet. After a minute, Jake realized she was asleep.

Good, she needs the rest, he thought. Now I just need to-

_I__was__wondering__when__you'd__finish__flirting_.

Oh hell.

Hannah chuckled, a sound that sent a shiver up Jake's spine.

What do you want? I'm kinda tired here, you know, he griped.

_You've__done__more__on__less__sleep,_ the AI quipped back. _Now,__about__that__stuff__we__were__talking__about__earlier-_

Jake groaned inwardly. Admittedly, he wanted to know about what had been going on during the fight. The voice in his head, his sudden plasma hands, where Hannah had been while he was getting his ass kicked...

But mostly, he wanted to sleep. He could deal with all the questions in the morning. And he said so to Hannah, in no uncertain terms.

_Well fine then_, she replied, sounding put off. _I'll just sit here in the teenage wasteland that is your mind until you wake up again._

You do that, Jake thought, closing his eyes and curling up closer to Karolina's warm, sweet-smelling body.

And for once, he didn't dream.

End of Issue 5, End of Arc: Teenage Wasteland

Next: Lost and Found

**A/N: And there we go. Behold, I actually got out of my writing funk and finished it! Hope you guys liked the "remixing" there. And if you think this was different, wait till we get to the next arc. Let me just say this...if you're hoping for Cloak and Dagger, prepare to be disappointed. If not...well, I think you'll enjoy what I have in store. **

**And now, to go start Lost and Found. **

**Cmdr. Gen. Marasco, Over and Out.**


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